WHAT IF: Historical fiction in the architectural design studio

Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay, Fargo, ND

Is it safe to say that architectural history plays a diminishing role in preparation for a professional architectural career in North America? Courses treating architecture of the past are still integral parts of professional curricula (barely) but two other considerations speak to their marginalization: 1) history is inevitably hyphenated with theory, the latter now the dominant twin; and 2) history-based knowledge has almost entirely disappeared from the professional licensing examination, typically administered two to three years after receipt of the first professional degree; an examination where the ‘Jeopardy’ answers are usually ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’ or ‘LeCorbusier’ and far less often ‘Adolf Loos’ or (God forbid) ‘Basil Champneys’. As someone educated and apprenticed for that next step, though teaching architectural history and design rather than pursuing licensure, I’ve sought other ways both to reinforce the utility and purpose of architectural history, integrating it more fully with the process of design, and to situate that body of knowledge more centrally within professional education. During the last dozen years, what we call the Agincourt Project has become one of those mechanisms — the foundation for what follows.

In the anatomy of most architectural curricula, the sequence of design studios form the spine, serving as armature for technical and socio-historical courses which become its ribs, tendons, musculature and nervous system. Depending upon the program, the studio sequence (or more accurately the laboratory, for that indeed is its ideal) extends from three to five years; these are the petri dish for holistic or integrated design, where structure and mechanical systems, history, theory, legal and economic considerations are fused into the design of structures for real, simulated or generic clients. The constraints of site, program (or ‘brief’ in the UK), codes and other governmental regulations, and even budgetary constraints often contribute to such a scenario. The creation of a fictional place, the imaginary town of Agincourt, Iowa, became a way to weave architectural history into this narrative. [I hold that no architectural thesis or capstone projects will be better than the student’s ability to imagine a client — and to keep in mind that they are not that client.]

As someone educated [notice I did not say ‘trained’] in architecture but not licensed to practice, I’m rarely asked to design anything which might be built. This truth often encourages me to generate design problems for my own mental exercise and enjoyment. Twelve years ago a random thought developed well beyond its immediate context and birthed the Agincourt Project.

AGINCOURT, not just a battle any more

Musing during the summer of 2006 about American architect Louis Sullivan [1856-1924], his late career during 1900-1920 was dogged by personal demons, and then blossomed briefly in a series of exquisite small-town banks he called ‘jewel boxes’. Bracketed between 1908 and 1919, they coincide with (I noted with intense interest) the era of public library construction underwritten by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who funded 1,800 libraries during more or less the same years that Sullivan designed his banks. One fascinating question arose in my mind: Sullivan was engaged in the right place and time with an appropriate clientele to have sought a Carnegie library commission — bank presidents are likely candidates to chair civic building committees — yet he apparently did not. That question alone is worth a moment’s consideration, but as a designer and teacher of architectural history, there was an inevitable follow-up: What would a Sullivan-designed public library look like? How would he have approached a problem that, by the time of his possible involvement, had already become formulaic — Sullivan’s own work being decidedly other than that, if the bank series is any evidence.

What began as a personal quest morphed into a design studio, and that into an exhibit, and those in turn became the basis for seminars and subsequent studios. A direct result of that evolution is the framework presented here, which defines a process that has evolved and been productive beyond my hopes and disappointing as well. More important, perhaps, is its potential to partner with traditional architectural history courses toward a common goal: an enhanced, more meaningful, and integrated role for architectural history in professional education.

The PROJECT

The most recent iteration of Agincourt has been a third-year design studio set in a five-year M.Arch curriculum. It offered one project set in an historical context, a matrix of three conditions: 1) building types, 2) stylistic categories or clusters, and 3) specific architects of the chosen period. Geography is an aspect of the last factor, since each architect is associated with a particular place and its socio-economic and cultural context. Project types are all common, if not frequent, during the period 1900-1920, and examples can be found in all market areas represented by the array of individual architects. The link between stylistic clusters and individual designers is a chicken-egg phenomenon: I can’t tell you which came first in my thinking. The three-dimensional matrix of style, name and building type, however, establishes a framework that both minimizes duplication and increases opportunities for comparison and contrast between and among students. I’ll expand each of these in reverse order.

ARCHITECTS and their STYLE(S):

STYLE CLUSTERS: The years between 1900 and 1920 were a vibrant period in the architecture of both Europe and North America°. The era of 19th century eclecticism had begun to give way — or at minimum to make room for — the emergence of Modernism. Also, the industrialization of materials never completely replaced craft traditions. I have suggested five clusters of style from those years: those that are #1) Historically Based, #2) Progressive, #3) Arts & Crafts, #4) Modernist, and #5) Art Nouveau. Of these five, the Progressive may be the most American, connected with both a political party and the socio-economic programs it espoused, though there are parallel reflections of that movement in Europe. The Art Nouveau, on the other hand (whether non- or anti-historical), touched the U.S. only at the margins and that through the decorative arts.

HISTORICALLY BASED: Arthur Beresford Pite (#2 from an alphabetical list below); Sir Edwin Lutyens (#13); Bernard Maybeck (#16); McKim Mead & White (#17)

PROGRESSIVE: Peter Behrens (#1); Louis Singleton Curtiss (#3); Josef Hoffmann (#9); William Richard Lethaby (#11); George Washington Maher (#15); Purcell & Elmslie (#19); Louis Sullivan (#22); Frank Lloyd Wright (#25)

ARTS & CRAFTS: Michel DeKlerk (#4); Wilson Eyre (#5); Ernest Gimson Greene & Greene (#7); Sir Edwin Lutyens (#13, again); Charles Rennie Mackintosh (#14); Bernard Maybeck (#16, again); Eliel Saarinen (#20); C.F.A. Voysey (#24)

MODERNIST: Irving Gill (#6); Adolf Loos (#12); Auguste Perret (#18)

ART NOUVEAU: Hector Guimard (#8); Victor Horta (#10); Charles Rennie Mackintosh (#14, again); Lars Sonck (#21) Louis Sullivan (#22); Henry van de Velde (#23)

[A style which interests me, but which is often overlooked or lumped with others for convenience, is the “Edwardian” — a style of short duration and limited geography which is, in my mind, another of those Mannerist Moments that rear their heads now and again. Primarily a British phenomenon, it has echoes in the U.S. and a few other locations. I’ve been reluctant to incorporate it here as a sort of monadnock of historical styles—though Arthur Beresford Pite could qualify.]

ARCHITECTS: Within those clusters, not all architects fit comfortably in a single compartment. There is an obvious break in the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, for example, between the Arts & Crafts character of his country houses and the later Classicism of his World War memorials; war can do that to people. Likewise, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work exhibits qualities of the continental Art Nouveau, which had limited acceptance in the U.K., but also of the Arts & Crafts which was native to Britain. In the case of Modernism, the net has been cast wide enough to include Austrian Adolf Loos, the Belgian-born French architect Auguste Perret, and Californian Irving Gill; all of their work seems to share a tendency toward clean lines, simple massing, and purged of all but crisp non- or minimally-historical detail.

1. BEHRENS, Peter [1868-1940; Berlin]
2. BERESFORD PITE, Arthur [1861-1934; London]
3. CURTISS, Louis Singleton [1865-1924; Kansas City]
4. deKLERK, Michel [1884-1923; Amsterdam]
5. EYRE, Wilson, Jr. [1858-1924; Philadelphia]
6. GILL, Irving John [1870-1936; Los Angeles]
7. GREENE (Charles Sumner) & GREENE (Henry Mather) [1868-1957 and 1870-1954] [Pasadena]
8. GUIMARD, Hector [1867-1942; Paris]
9. HOFFMANN, Josef [1870-1956; Vienna]
10. HORTA, Victor [1861-1947; Brussels]
11. LETHABY, William Richard [1857-1931; London]
12. LOOS, Adolf Karl Viktor Maria [1870-1933; Vienna]
13. LUTYENS, Sir Edwin Landseer [1869-1944; London]
14. MACKINTOSH, Charles Rennie [1868-1928; Glasgow]
15. MAHER, George Washington [1864-1926; Chicago]
16. MAYBECK, Bernard Ralph [1862-1957; Berkeley]
17. McKIM MEAD & WHITE [look them up; New York City]
18. PERRET, Auguste [1874-1954; Paris]
19. PURCELL (William Gray) & ELMSLIE (George Grant) [1880-1965 and 1869-1952] [Minneapolis and Chicago]
20. SAARINEN, Gottlieb Eliel [1873-1950; Helsinki]
21. SONCK, Lars Eliel [1870-1956; Helsinki]
22. SULLIVAN, Louis Henry [1856-1924; Chicago]
23. Van de VELDE, Henry [1868-1957; Brussels]
24. VOYSEY, Charles Francis Annesley [1857-1941; London]
25. WRIGHT, Frank Lloyd [1867-1959; Chicago, Los Angeles]

Several names may be unfamiliar outside the United States [I’m writing this for a potential European audience]: brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene (Southern California), Bernard Maybeck (San Francisco Bay), Louis Singleton Curtiss (Kansas City), Purcell & Elmslie (Minneapolis), George W. Maher (a Chicago contemporary and competitor of Frank Lloyd Wright), and Wilson Eyre (Philadelphia). American readers, on the other hand, may need an introduction to Lars Sonck (Finland), Arthur Beresford Pite (England), and Eliel Saarinen (Finnish father of mid-century Modernist Eero Saarinen). Others in the matrix are mainstays of the canon, prominent in history survey courses for students in both Europe and North America. Each, however, requires investigation and analysis by the student as part of an in-class presentation — another opportunity to learn through discussion of similarities and differences and, indeed, what those two concepts themselves may mean; a difference in appearance may not necessarily reflect a difference in content.

[As if this projects weren’t already driven by personal interest and preference, there are a number of architects who might have made the list, except for the paucity of information available for analysis, though on-line sources may have changed that. Some of these may also be selected by a student, or another name altogether suggested as an alternative. Consider these additional characters, an even more egregiously jaundiced selection than those above: Erik Gunnar ASPLUND [1885-1940; Stockholm]; Ralph Adams CRAM [1863-1942; Boston]; Kirtland CUTTER [1860-1939; Spokane]; Cass GILBERT [1859-1934; NYC]; Walter Burley GRIFFIN [1876-1937; Chicago]; Károly KÓS [1883-1977; Budapest]; Robert MALLET-STEVENS [1886-1945; Paris]; Erich MENDELSOHN [1887-1953; Berlin]; and Clough WILLIAMS-ELLIS [1883-1978; Portmeirion, Wales]. Though some of these are personal favorites, I would also add William Halsey WOOD [1855-1897], an American architect and subject of a long-term research-writing project of mine.

BUILDING TYPES and their rationale: The distribution of building types among the architects mentioned above adds further richness to the matrix. Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, for example — one of the Big Three in the emergence of a truly American architecture distinct from and no longer dependent upon European precedent (but not immune to it) is difficult to classify: an ornamental style linked with the Art Nouveau, but whose plans were Beaux Arts, rational, even Progressive (as many of his clients might also be described). Assigning him the ‘D’ option, the single-family house for a university professor, is an interesting choice for two reasons: Sullivan is known primarily as a designer of commercial and institutional buildings, and his comparatively few houses, especially the late ones, are stiff and formal, more country club than house — they might not be considered very domestic. Matching Sullivan with the bank type (‘F’) establishes the opposite condition: he did many small banks during his late career — they date from 1908 to 1919 — and are uniformly good and instructive of his design method. So, Sullivan offers only peripheral or analogous guidance for designers of houses, but considerable information pertinent to the design of a bank, perhaps too much information.

‘A’— A Market Hall in a Small Town: Before refrigeration, weekly or even daily farmer’s markets were common in towns of large and moderate size, anywhere access to meat and produce was restricted by distance. Mediaeval cities grew organically around such places. And towns of even modest size would have supported construction of a facility of this sort.

‘B’— A Parish Church or Mission Chapel: The small parish church or mission chapel in more urban areas was a common building type, but can also be found in rural communities. [For inspiration I recommend the mission church at Sunderland Point, Morecambe, Lancs., U.K. (1894) by Paley & Austin, or the summer chapel-of-ease St Simon’s-by-the-Sea at Mantoloking, New Jersey (1886) by William Halsey Wood.] This period was dominated by massive urban change through immigration (from Europe as well as rural America) and the Social Gospel as the Christian response.

‘C’— A Small Library (Private, Public, or Institutional): Between 1900 and the 1920, the public library was essentially codified through the influence of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, becoming almost formulaic in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Less common on the continent, an institutional, professional  or private library would have been as likely.

‘D’— The single-family house during 1900–1920 hung on the cusp of dramatic change in domestic life. A House for a University Professor: Professorship connoted a different social standing a hundred years ago than it does today. In addition to family members, it is assumed that graduate students and other professors will be regular visitors.

‘E’— A Public Bath House and Comfort Station: Prior to the advent of municipal services for water and sewer, public baths were as common as they were in ancient Rome—and for the same reasons: convenience and public health. In light of the influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the predominance of tuberculosis in a time before wide-spread acceptance of germ theory, design of many types was driven by concerns for public health.

‘F’— A Small or Branch Bank: The nature of banking and its role in any community changed dramatically between the First and Second World Wars. Prior to 1920, there were many more independent banks, home-owned, with boards of directors made up of people from the community they served, rather than large-scale, interstate institutions of the next decades. Before suffrage, special accommodations were often made for women and children, while the “men folk” transacted business.

‘G’— A Transit Station or Hub: The trolley and interurban were a common means of transport before the automobile. Center city became a nexus of transit lines and a logical transfer point among them. It served as a place to meet as well as a gateway. And not incidentally, it was often the only public comfort station in the Central Business District.

‘H’— A World War Memorial: After 1919, an astonishing number of war memorials were constructed in Europe, Britain, the U.S. and Canada — acknowledging a world-wide event through local sacrifice — at a time when Classicism was interpreted more loosely. Yet that style was often preferred, due to its dignified formality and composure. This could be a large, urban stand-alone memorial or a battlefield cemetery in a more rural setting. Sir Edwin Lutyens produced what seems an inexhaustible supply of them, the memorial counterpart to thinking globally, while acting locally.

Sullivan may be the most egregious example of the too-much/too-little phenomenon. Many of the remaining building types were typical of their time but infrequently given the attention of an architect. Some have gone the way of the dodo; others have been recurrent or revived. Several of these architects had extensive careers with considerable output, whereas other produced little or very specialized or focused work and devoted much of their output to writing, rather than design: Loos (apartments and detached houses), Saarinen (homes and apartment buildings), Lutyens (Arts & Crafts=country houses; Neo-Classical=war memorials and buildings for government). Three types are nearly absent from the literature (professional, not socio-historical): the market hall, public bath, and transit depot, though common enough in vernacular design or the oeuvres of other architects not included here, yet they existed in large numbers.

DESIGNS IN SERIES: There are any number of designs ‘in series’ which fascinate. The eight banks of Louis Sullivan are a case in point. As are H. H. Richardson’s depots for the Boston & Albany railroad in the 1880s. But there are others in both architecture and art: 1) the detached single-family houses of Adolf Loos; 2) the six English Baroque churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor; 3) the 1920s “textile block” houses of Frank Lloyd Wright; 4) the Paris Metro stations of Hector Guimard; and in art, 5) the watercolor windmills by Frank Brangwyn which illustrate the 1923 book Windmills by Brangwyn and Hayter Preston. What would the next in any of these series look like? How does repetition avoid the formulaic?¹

ONE-OFF DESIGNS: On the other hand, there are unique structures crying out to be part of a series (in my estimation), such as the 1902 Bülowstraße U-bahn station in Berlin by architect Bruno Möhring. How might Möhring have approached a second? A third? Any architect who has done one of something is fair game for this question to be raised.

THE NULL SET: Multiples and singletons may be a characteristic of a specific architect’s career, but there are also voids: building types completely unrepresented in the designers oeuvre. One example comes to mind (because it happens to be the topic of a current research-writing project) — American architect William Halsey Wood [1855–1897]. Wood’s project list is lopsided in the extreme: of 150+ projects identified, sixty-five were churches, sixty of them for Anglican/Episcopal clients. Institutional and residential clients are represented in much smaller numbers. But Wood never designed a public building, which is odd for a late 19th century American architect. No courthouses; no city halls. How might an architect with an ecclesiastic inclination have dealt with a secular, American county courthouse? [I’ve coped with it and failed modestly enough to not be embarrassed.]

The MATRIX

Here, then, is a matrix of building types and styles, with the names of architects linked in situations which (we hope) will elicit design responses that are inspired rather than imitative.

CASE STUDIES (some guidance from the seat of my pants):

#01: Consider the case of architect Louis Sullivan and the commission for the home of a university professor. Let’s choose 1910 and the University of Chicago as contributors of the context. Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood had been a separate municipality until annexed in 1889. The World’s Fair of 1893 was staged there and John D Rockefeller established the University of Chicago simultaneous with the fair. Hyde Park was and remains an island of low density and affluence. Lot sizes are generous, especially near the university; a lack of alleys (rear lanes in the U.K.) requires access from the street. Streets east and north of the university are a virtual directory, a Who’s Who of the city’s more prominent architects, including Wright and his contemporary George Maher, among others. Styles ranged from Craftsman and Progressive to ‘Jacobethan’ and Renaissance Revival.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses for the Robies and Hellers are in the Hyde Park neighborhood, more notably the former at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue. Mrs Robie had been a University of Chicago graduate and wished to maintain her campus connections. For Mr Robie it was a convenient commute to the Loop six miles north on the Illinois Central. The city’s elevated railway (the ‘L’) edged the south and west sides, providing less costly access to and from the city, but more plebeian.

What questions would be useful in approaching this design opportunity?

• What was the social role of a university professor a hundred-plus years ago? What age might we presume? What aspects of his (he would probably have been a male) teaching might involve the home?
• What was the role of a woman in that context? As wife, homemaker, mother, and member of the community at large.

#02: Consider the case of Adolf Loos, whose early work consisted largely of interiors, most of them residential and retail. Only late in his career did he design complex free-standing structures. So his designs are both spatial and volumetric. Loos referred to this as the ‘plan of volumes’: plan and section drawings are simply insufficient to understand the enfilade (spatial sequencing) which is integral. [Two visits to the Villa Moller in Vienna convinced me that Loos’s methodology was successful.] How might he have approached a problem differently, whether it was free-standing or adaptive use? For Loos, I’m adding a special case: an entry in the Weissenhof Housing Estate at Stuttgart of 1927, somewhat outside the general bounds of the project, but possible, since Loos was on the original list of architects invited to participate in that exercise.

#03: Consider the case of William Lethaby, known more, perhaps, for his work as an educator. Lethaby’s design philosophy is embedded in his writings and lectures and incidentally in the limited number of works that he produced, so there is limited precedent In this scenario, what he said may be as important as what he did.

• Lethaby’s clients were few in number. Is it possible to determine anything about them as a group? Qualities they may have shared? Even qualities shared with Lethaby?

#04: Consider the case of Dutch modernist Michel deKlerk, socially-driven and ‘Progressive’ in the best sense of the word. Most of his work is embedded in the context of social uplift and improvement, perhaps to a stronger degree than might be expected in the United States during those same years. Something similar could be said of Horta (whose clients included both industrialists and the Socialist labor movement) and to a lesser degree of Henry Van de Velde.

#05: Auguste Perret, among the youngest of the architects in the matrix, provides an opportunity to explore the newest material of the 20th century for architectural application: reinforced concrete or what the French call beton brut. Both Perret and the slightly older Frank Lloyd Wright investigated concrete at about the same time, chronologically, though drawing somewhat different lessons from the encounter.

#06: Among these names, several are unfamiliar, I’m sure, people like Bernard Maybeck and Louis Singleton Curtiss. Curtiss was a Kansas City architect little mentioned in history surveys, yet his work is interesting — primarily residential but also some commercial work — and in a style one might almost classify as American Secessionist, i.e., Viennese. Look him up. Curtiss might well be considered in the context of ‘buildings in series’, because of the series of railroad depots he designed in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas.

#07: Also consider the breadth of design media represented here: Horta and Van de Velde were graphic designers; Mackintosh, Voysey, Lutyens, and others designed furniture. Josef Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte and produced designs for its manufacture. This was an era when the boundaries between various areas of design were blurred, if they existed at all. How might that understanding influence your own thinking?

#OPTIONAL: Appearing at the end of this narrative, the following ‘case study’ might very well become an introduction to the semester; a warm-up exercise to get us in the spirit.

When John J Glessner wrote renowned Boston architect H H Richardson concerning the design of his home, and approached Richardson with hesitance, almost apologetic, Richardson’s reply stands as a paradigm for architects today: He wrote, ‘I’ll plan anything a man wants, from a cathedral to a chicken coop. That’s the way I make a living’. In the spirit of H H Richardson, design a chicken coop in the style of an architect of your choice from the list above. Don’t think of this as ‘extra credit’ but, rather, as one more chance to design.

¿POURQUOI? Why propose an architectural design studio/laboratory which is historically based? First, I would maintain that every architectural design opportunity is (or ought to be) grounded in history: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’, says George Santayana. But my rationale goes beyond that fundamental position.

When I began my so-called career at NDSU (more years ago than I care to count), the history of architecture was a required course; everyone took it because they had to. Today, I wonder what percentage would if it were merely an elective. As I began this essay (with an observation about the declining centrality of architectural history for professional development, an observation with more than a little cynicism), I ought to have mentioned that historic preservation was a new and often untrod path for architects then, especially in the U.S. Midwest and in smaller communities, where it was seen as snooty and high falutin: The banker’s house was preserved without question; the factory worker’s row house was expendable. One city planner summed up the local opinion: ‘How are we going to support all those “old house” museums?’ Now who’s being cynical?

Since those early days, preservation has become an independent academic discipline. And, though I doubt many of our graduates will be involved with pure restoration in their careers, I suspect that any number of design challenges will come their way which involve adaptive re-use and/or sympathetic addition to buildings of even modest architectural merit. Such work can be accomplished within any number of viewpoints, from literal imitation to outright contrast. But all of them can be fulfilling. And their success depends, I contend, upon the designer’s awareness of and sensitivity to the building at hand and the program to be accommodated. Not all shoes fit every foot.

I’ve crafted these exercises (and I do mean crafted) to take students outside their comfort zone and present a challenge drawn from the perspective that permeates this brief, believing sincerely that we will learn more about who we are and what we know by understanding who we aren’t and what we don’t — or what we shouldn’t. If that doesn’t make sufficient sense, then we need to have coffee or a beer some time and talk it over. Oh, and if it does make sense, that offer of beverage and conversation is still open for a fruitful discussion.

° Those who fault what must seem a Eurocentric point of view raise a valid concern, to which I offer two responses and a mea culpa: 1) the defined period (in this case, 1900-1920) is, indeed, focused on the lineage of European cultures and their styles; 2) different time brackets would invite, even necessitate, other, larger world views — the years 1950-1970, for example, with a growing awareness of vernacular and non-Western traditions reflected in architectural curricula. Ultimately, however, the proposition offered here comes from an eccentric white septuagenarian Eurocentric architectural historian whose students have come predominantly from comparable middle-class backgrounds. I rest my case because it may be that I have none.

¹ Author Peter Ackroyd wrote Hawksmoor based loosely on the British baroque architect Nicholas Hawksmoor — except that the titular character is a 20th century Scotland Yard detective. The 18th century architect Nicholas Dyer is an altogether different sort of character, a mystic involved in the occult. Without revealing plot twists — and contortions! — Dyer designs the six churches created by the actual Hawksmoor, except that he also designs a seventh church which has never existed in either fact or fiction. The story was so compelling that I finished at late one night an dreamed that seventh church, which I then drew the next morning. Would it be mistaken for a real Hawksmoor church? Doubtful.