Style in
the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical
Aesthetics
by Gottfried Semper; introduction by Harry
Francis Mallgrave
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles,
2004
992 pp., illus. 359 b/w, 19 col. Trade,
$80.00
ISBN: 0-89236-597-8.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
Style is the long overdue translation
of the classic text by the nineteenth-century
architect and scholar Gottfried Semper.
Before anything else it must be said that
this is a magnificent translation, a beautiful
book and the result of a bold and adventurous
editorial enterprise. Applause from all
ranks for the Getty Research Institute,
which has once again proven to be unfailing
in its endeavour to make important artistic
sources available to a wider English-reading
audience.
Well, 'available' is maybe a bit too optimistic
because the book itself is quite monumental
and certainly not an easy read. Semper
wasn't an easy guy either, and his 1850's
Germanremember German culture
was at its idealist height with authors
like Hegel dominating the philosophical
scenewas pretty well developed.
A phrase is a phrase is a phrase, and
it continuous sometimes without end. So
another round of applause for Harry Mallgrave
and Michael Robinson who turned this magnum
opus into more or less readable English
without losing the general atmosphere
that swings between exalted aestheticism,
pedantic social criticism, and engineerish
practicality.
So who was this Semper (1803 Rome
1879)? The son of a middle class family
based in Hamburg, he excelled in maths
and classic languages and followed an
erratic course through practically all-European
countries, studying architecture and engineering
in Germany and France and visiting Italy
and Greece on several occasions. He became
a successful architect, building among
others the monumental Hoftheater at Dresden.
After participating in the 1848-1849 uprising
in that city (alongside that other idealistic
rebel Richard Wagner), he was obliged
to leave the country and seek his fortune
elsewhere. Via Paris he was stranded in
London where he pursued his historic,
archaeological, and architectural studies
in the same reading rooms of the British
Museum where Karl Marx was scribbling
Das Kapital (1876). In London,
he was hired by Henry Cole as a teacher
at the School of Practical Art. This position
saved him from a journey to the United
States and gave him time to develop his
ideas on the basic elements of art and
architecture.
In summary, Semper's thesis is that practical
artistic and architectural forms can be
understood by looking at the raw materials
used: textiles for binding and covering
(walls), ceramics for molding and strengthening
in an adequate form (the hearth), tectonics
and carpentry for scaffolding and thatching
(roofs and furniture), and stereotomy,
masonry and so on for structural strength
(pillars, support). Each of these classes
of materials follows its own natural laws
and the elements or ornaments made from
them of necessity take specific forms.
Themes derived from one class can of course
be transposed to other materials, just
as materials are not limited to their
natural usages. Weaving for example can
be used to make baskets, serving a function
that is more naturally ceramic. Only metal,
which is by nature malleable, strong,
flexible and rigid, can serve all functions,
albeit in a less typical way.
Style than, is the harmonious and internally
logical application of the whole range
of materials and their derived forms,
brought together under the internal pressure
of the material and the external pressures
of the cultural, historical and personal
context of its creation.
Semper intended to write a book in three
volumes: the first two dealing with the
materials and their evolution in oriental,
pre-classical, classical and contemporary
architecture (internal pressures) and
the last one capping it all with an analysis
of architecture as a consequence of both
the internal and the external pressures.
This third volume was never finished,
only the first draft of about 40 pages
was written. So we are left with Sempers
discussion of textiles, ceramics, tectonics,
stereotomy, and metallurgy '[c]onsidered
in Themselves and in Relation to Architecture'.
Fortunately, Harry Mallgrave offers us
a peek into the possible content of that
famous third part in his thoroughly researched
introduction to the life, work, and philosophy
of Semper. Maybe the architect himself
felt that by the time he was writing,
some of his ideas were already becoming
obsolete. At the height of his fame as
a practicing architect, his views were
already challenged by younger theorists,
philosophers, and scientists, so it may
be just as well that the grand man didn't
finish his book. Anyway, the two volumes
at hand are a fascinating journey through
architectural form and through the mind
of an engineer in idealist times. That
in itself, with Mallgrave as a guide who
knows all the intimate details, is more
than worthwhile.