Q

D' ARQUITECTURA I URBANISME

Traduccin al castellano
English translation

PUBLICACI DEL COLLEGI OFICIAL D' ARQUITECTES DE CATALUNYA

Traduccin al castellano
SENTIMIENTO Y RAZON
Pg. 9

El entendimiento de la arquitectura desde

su presencia sensible, desde la prioridad de la apariencia, son cuestiones inscribibles en e! marco de la
nueva sensibilidad realista que impregna difusamente nuestra cultura. De ah la valoracin de lo
material y corpreo, e! redescubrimiento de la ornamentacin, la voluntad de permanencia que introduce de nuevo la necesidad de lo constructivo,
indicativas de la aproximacin fenomenolgica a la
experiencia con la que e! realismo opera. Es sta
una actitud que tiene sus races en la polmica italiana de los aos 50-60 sobre e! papel de la tradicin y
el contexto en la proyectacin, de tanta influencia
en la arquitectura espaola de aquellos aos, que
llev a proponer la necesidad de una arquitectura
realista, entendida como aquella ms ajustada a los
mecanismos de produccin y consumo, frente al
idealismo de la ortodoxia moderna 1. Aunque e!
tiempo transcurrido hace ahora innecesario insistir
en fidelidades inquebrantables conduciendo hacia
nuevos y aventurados derroteros, subsiste en ambos momentos un acercamiento al proyecto desde
la prioridad a lo especfico y concreto ms que desde la referencia a inmateriales prototipos, desde la
primaca de los sensible, desde e! sentimiento.
Frente a ello conviene recordar como caracterstica diferencial del arte moderno la aproximacin esencialista a la realidad propuesta por la
abstraccin, en donde siguiendo una lgica neoplatnica2 , e! alejamiento de la apariencia insista en
subrayar la prioridad de la Idea, reencontrada trabajosamente a travs de los plidos reflejos de!
mundo sensible, fundamentando as la actividad artstica sobre el abstracto ejercicio de la razn.
Por otro lado, la valoracin de lo abstracto
ha sido tambin siempre sustentada por todas las
propuestas que tienden a acentuar e! carcter normativo y transmisible de la proyectacin, preocupadas por reducir el mundo visible a formas inmutables, generales y eternas, renunciando a aquella
individualidad y originalidad en la que estamos
acostumbrados a ver e! carcter distintivo de la
creacin.
Aunq ue el pragmatismo de fondo de la modernidad aplicada siempre propici puntos de en-

cuentro entre los modelos ,ancionados por la tradicin y las formas propuestas por la nueva sensibilidad, produciendo una va de acceso al proyecto sobre e! que la crtica y la prctica rroyectual ha centrado recientemente su atencin, tambin fue responsable de! intenso y, a menudo estril, eclecticismo en e! que se debate buena parte de la arquitectura que se proclama fiel a la ortodoxia moderna, hacindonos olvidar aquella insistencia sobre e! valor
de la idea, de la radicalidad conceptual, sobre la que
la arquitectura moderna haba construido su universo figurativo, fundamento de su presencia operativa.
El inters actual por la obra de! arquitecto
de la Sota, de! que en las pginas que siguen puede
verse un resumen incompleto pero ilustrativo de las
lneas de evolucin de su produccin\ es bien expresivo de esta dialctica realismo-abstraccin. La
obra de de la Sota puede as verse como un largo
proceso por -dicindolo con sus palabras- "gozar
de las cosas all donde casi dejan de serlo"s; que explicara e! trnsito de sus obras iniciales (Poblado
de Esquive!, casa para e! Dr. Arce) hasta sus obras
maduras (Gobierno Civil de Tarragona, Gimnasio
Maravillas, Concurso para la Sede de Aviaco) como
un largo camino en e! que, al modo de un ritual inicitico, ser preciso irse desprendiendo de lo accee
sorio, de lo fenomnico, para acceder a lo esencial,
a la Idea. De ah tambin e! gusto por lo e!emental,
por lo mnimo, por-utilizando un adjetivo querido
por e! arquitecto-la "finura" de las cosas, expresiva
de la voluntad de desm<\terializacin con la que esta
arquitectura quiere construirse. La invencin ser
aqu entendida como la actuacin de la lgica sobre
la realidad, siendo ella la que con radicalidad extrema organizar e! proyecto, justificando la creacin
de lo nuevo como fruto de la accin demirgica de!
artista pose ido por la razn, reafirmando de esta
forma la arquitectura como fruto de la inteligencia.
Obras -y de ah e! motivo ltimo de esta
publicacin- que nos recuerdan que e! arte ha
hecho siempre compatibles e! sentimiento con la
razn.
josep-L1us MATEO.
NOTAS
1. Oriol Bohigas "La polmica idealismorealismo". Hogar y Arquitectura nO 11, 1960.
2. Un estudio de la historia del arte vasado en la formulacin platnica puede seguirse en E. Panofsky,

"Idea", Ed. Ctedra, Madrid, 1977. 3. El inters

actual por la obra de arquitectos como Asplund y,
en otro tono, como Salvisberg que aqu publicamos
es fiel reflejo de esta actitud. 4. Puede verse un resumen complementario a nuestra revisin- de la obra
de! arquitecto en e! nO 62 de la revista Arquitectura,
Madrid, 1981. S. A. de la Sota "Sobre Chillida" .Revista Nacional de Arquitectura.

ASNAGO y VENDER:
UN ESTILO ATEMPORAL
Pg. 42

1.- En los manuales de historia de la arquitectura moderna no se dedica a su trabajo ms que

alguna breve indicacin, y ni siquiera las revistas
especializadas se han ocupado gran cosa de ellos,
pese a que la actividad de Mario Asnagoy de Claudio Vender se inicia hacia el principio de los aos
treinta y se extiende hasta mediados de los setenta.
Parecen condenados a permanecer confinados en
una especie de semianonimato, como tantsimos
otros dignos profesionales.
Nos permitimos, no obstante, apuntar la
sospecha de que la valoracin que generalmente de
ellos se hace es absolutamente inadecuada, y de que
la obra de Asnago y Vender merece, an hoy, una
atencin muy diferente.
Hoy se ve con toda claridad que e! hilo de!
racionalismo italiano de entreguerras es en realidad
una intrincada maraa, en la que cada individualidad actuaba independientemente y en donde las
posiciones, si bien comunes en algunas cuestiones
de fondo, eran en realidad sumamente variadas.
Asnago y Vender presentaban ciertamente e! ala
purista de! movimiento, y lo eran de un modo absolutamente extrao a todo intento de teorizacin,
incluso con una cierta exhibicin de despego profesional. Se trata de una actitud comn a otros arquitectos milaneses de la poca, pero que Asnago y
Vender mantuvieron inmutable inlcuso en sus trabajos de la postguerra.
2.- Mario Asnago (Seveso 1896-Como

1981) Y Claudio Vender (Miln 1904) asisten juntos

a la Academia de Brera y.obtienen e! ttulo e! ao
1928. Inician entonces una actividad muy intensa,
dedicada casi exclusivamente a una clientela privada reclutada entre la alta burguesa, y que se prolongar hasta pasada la mitad de los setenta.
Sus primeros trabajos se inspiran en e! clasicismo novecentista, ya filtrado rigurosamente
(casas de Via Eurpide 7, 1933, Y de Via Manin,
1931-34). El punto de inflexin en la evolucin de
su gusto est constituido por el establecimiento Vigan (1933), en e! que el novecentismo an presente se transforma en purismo a travs de la extremada transparencia de la superficie vidriada y de la
austera presencia de! mobiliario y de la decoracin
interna.
A partir de este momento y hasta finales de
los cincuenta, e! camino hacia unas formas metafsicamente descarnadas ser recorrido con absoluto
ngor.
El ao 1936, en la VI Trienal, Asnago y
Vender se presentan con una decoracin de sala de
estar de extrema, inslita ligereza, y, e! mismo ao,
construyen las casas de la calle Tunisia y de Eurpide 9, en las cuales aplican una utilizacin de galeras
y balcones que determina una disposicin horizontal de la fachada ya lo que no se encuentra nada semejante entre los trabajos ms avanzados de la po"Ca. En e! ao 1937, de nuevo es adoptada la disposicin horizontal, en Via Eurpide 1, pero e! peso de!
balconaje es derivado hacia abajo. El valor de! plano de la fachada se salva, pese a la irregularida del
conjunto, gracias a la' curvatura de! cuerpo de! edificio.
En los dos establecimientos milaneses de!
39 (Bar Moka y pastelera), su gusto por la decoracin y mobiliario ligeros y transparentes y por los
colores tenues sobre fondo uniforme halla una expresin estable y acabada.
En la casa de via Col Moschin, por el contrario, abandonan la bsqueda de nuevos caminos,
realizada en las obras precedentes, en favor de una
mayor uniformidad de la fachada, interpretada
ahora como plano istropo.
El ao 1940 proyectan la fbrica de tractores de Cusane Milanino. En este caso, la libertad
para disear fachadas independientes de toda exigencia funcional permite plantearlas de forma
aboslutamente abstracta. En consecuencia, la obra
que cierra e! decenio ms importante de la actividad

3
de Asnago y Vender es, adems un resumen de su
actitud ante la funcin que el edificio ha de desarrollar: la tienen sumamente en cuenta, pero jams sujetan composicin y expresin a la sola exigencia
utilitaria. As, su arquitectura, moderna y a la vez
burguesa, halla su mbito de dignidad no en la retric~ de la implantacin o en la reconfortante exhibicin de materiales duraderos, sino precisamente en
la superacin del funcionalismo mezquino a travs
de una composicin abstracta, de gran simplicidad
y ligereza. Y este verdadero trabajo de investigacin ser :\bsolutamente mantenido incluso en los
ltimos aos de la postguerra, por encima de modas en perpetuo cambio.
Entre 1950 y 1955, Asnago y Vender realizan, entre otras obras, edificios para oficinas y para
viviendas en el centro de Miln, en la plaza Velas ca,
en Via Lanzone (para la Ferrotubi) y en Via Albricci, y, en Barlessina, una quinta de pequeas dimensiones pero de gran categora.
En estos aos rechazan por completo toda
reelaboracin neorrealista o ambientalista, en favor
de una edificacin de rigor impecable, nicamente
enriquecida -en comparacin con los trabajos de
los aos treinta- por un discreto uso de materiales
de calidad, exactamente los mismos que los arquitectos novecentistas haban usado siempre en abundancia.
En su obra, de este modo, el concepto de
"ambiente" se concreta siempre en el de "ciudad
contruida", sin pintorsquismos ni lirismos: siempre buscando la materializacin de un racional (o
metafsico?) orden urbano.
3.- En resumen: a travs de la serie de sus
edificios milaneses, Asnago y Vender desarrollaron, entre los aos treinta y los cincuenta, toda una
investigacin sobre la arquitectura del plano. En la
arquitectura y en sus complementos no subrayan
jams la superficie, sino siempre el plano: ste tiene
un espesor, acaso reducido en relacin con las otras
dos dimensiones, pero en todo momento presente.
Asnago y Vender ponen en evidencia el
plano de la fachada precisamente mediante pequeos desplazamientos hacia afuera o hacia adentro,
de balconajes o de los distintos tipos de postigos, y
el mismo gusto por las alusiones a la pro fundida, a
travs de la utilizacin de filtros planos transparente, vuelve a ser hallado en los interiores. Los respaldos en cruz de sus sillas crean un sistema de planos
transparentes que animan el espacio y le confieren

profundidad.
Hay por lo tanto una continuidad entre el
interior y el exterior de sus casas, en virtud del empleo de los planos y de las transparencias. El espacio, atravesado por los planos que le dan profundidad y ligereza, resulta medido y evidenciado, y se
convierte en el verdadero protagonista de su arquitectura. Sin embargo, es un protagonista -y lo miso
le sucede a la profundidad- al que se hace alusin,
que no es jams impuesto. No hay una construccin del espacio por medio del plano -como, por
.ejemplo, lo hay en el neoplasticismo holands-,
sino alusin a su profundidad a travs de transparencias de planos, o de suaves deslizamientos de
planos.
De esta manera, en la arquitectura de Asnago y Vender el elemento prevalente no es el volumen, sino ms bien el plano, el espacio interno. El '
exterior del edificio, la entrada, los vanos de escalera y ascensor hasta las dependencias, constituyen
una suerte de espacio caracterizado uniformemente, mediante transparencias que le confieren ligereza y profundidad. Persico ha definido el establecimiento Vi gano de Piazza Cordusio (1933) como
"transparente y coloreada como una esfera iridiscente de cristal".
Esta relacin entre el plano externo, que insina profundidades veladas, y las transparencias
del interior se mantiene como uno de los ms interesantes efectos de la arquitectura de estos autores,
bien difcil de transmitir a travs de la fotografa o
del dibujo. ya en sus primeros edificios, y especialmente en la casa de Via Manin, de sabor an novecentista, Asnago y Vender trabajan con ligeros movimientos en la fachada y muestran propensin a
tratarla como plano de inflexin, incluso si se trata
de girar el ngulo en funcin de la forma del conjunto. No debe olvidarse que su profesor de arquitectura, en Brera, fue Colonnese que con Muzie y el
ingeniero Barelli construy, a poca distancia de
all, la "ca brutta": tanto su arranque metafsico
como la curvatura de su fachada tienen en la "ca
brutta" un seguro antecedente.
Pero es en la casa de Via Eurpide 9 y en la
de Tunisia 50, ambas del 36, en donde Asnago y
Vender inician con toda energa sus investigaciones
sobre la arquitectura del plano. Su liberacin de las
normas del lenguaje novecentista, el descubrimiento del racionalismo y de la pintura abstracta ejercen
probablemente un efecto catalanizador y les ayu-

dan a enfocar los temas que les interesan. En estas

obras, el plano de fachada, en exceso vertical, se
proporciona de nuevo por medio del empleo de lminas de revestimiento en los balcones de los pisos
altos. Un poco apelotonados en la calle Tunisia, los
balcones son resueltos de modo ejemplar en Via
Eurpide meidante el vaciado de galeras en los pisos superior e inferior, lo que reduce la dimensin
altura en el plano de la fachada y lo proporciona
dentro del conjunto. La parte inferior de la fachada
es repartida con regularidad por los balconcillos de
la serie de aberturas, que rompen su rigidez, a la vez
que el ensanchamiento del espacio entre las pilastras de los dos arcos centrales, con ,el correspondiente estrechamiento de los laterales, conduce a un
ritmo de fachada ms reposado, tendente a la horizontalidad.
El plano de fachada de las casas de las calles
Eurpide y Tunisia es interrumpido por placas de
recubrimiento, por voladizos por elementos horizontales tendentes a reconstruir la proporcin. En
la Via Eurpide 1, de 1938, Asnago y Vender desarrollan una misma tensin en direcciones diferentes, respectivamente en el plano y en los complementos horizontales: el peso de los balcones es desviado hacia abajo, mientras que el plano de fachada
se libera hacia arriba. La decisin de llevar la galera
a la parte superior podra acaso ser un hornenaje a
Gio Ponti, que haba acusado de pesadez, al presentar en Domus los dos edificios del 36, la decisin
de llevar las terrazas hacia arriba.
El edificio reasume as alguno de los elementos tradicionales de la construccin milanesa,
como, por ejemplo, el balcn continuo. Incluso en
la utilizacin de los cerramientos cuidan siempre
ambos arquitectos de acentuar y reforzar las decisiones compositivas: celosas en los pisos bajos,
con su denso claroscuro; puertas correderas en los
superiores, en donde el efecto del plano debe ser
an ms evidente.
En la casa de Via Col Moschin, la operacin cambia de signo. Se tiende al plano istropo,
espacido de manera homognea siguiendo el ritmo
de los balcones. Ningn intento de compensacin
de proporciones: el plano de fachada no es corregido, sino exhibido tal como es, con el nico comentario de los balconcillos que se abren en su superficie. Se trata, de alguna manera, de una obra de transicin, en cambino hacia el resultado brillante, acabado, del edificio Zanoletti de Via albricci 8. Aqu

el plano mantiene intacta su unidad, y no muestra

ms incidencias que las aportadas por los diferentes
materiales de revestimiento, por los distintos diseos y dimensiones de los diversos postigos, por la
leve entrada de las ventanas del ltimo piso: sugiriendo, ms que imponiendo, una disposicin en
horizontal.
Con la casa de Via Velas ca 4, el itinerario
queda concluido. El edificio haba de dar a una calle
estrecha. La posicin en escorzo es la nica apropiada, y las sucesivas demoliciones realizadas en la
plaza alteran hoy su significado.
El plano es istropo, la disposicin que
aparece como impuesta es ligersima, los entran~es
de las ventanas en los pisos altos apenas esbozados.
Acaso el equilibrio perfecto de la fachada de la casa
de Via Albricci comience ya a diluirse en un exceso
de abstraccin que tiende a comfundir plano y superficie.
4.- Con respecto a la tecnologa de la construccin, la actitud de Asnago y Vender se muestra
constantemente profesional y antiliteraria. No aparece en su trabajo oposicin ninguna a tcnicas que
el gusto corriente impone, ni a exigencias de economa o de funcionalidad. Asnago y Vender se sienten
copartcipes de su poca y no se oponen a ella con
tomas de posicin elitista o inconformistas. Su arquitectura, por el contrario, lleva al extremo algunas posibilidades que estn implcitas en la construccin habitual, y se desarrolla a travs de ellas la
luminonidad, la ligereza, el uso de amplias vidrieras y de marcos de venta muy delgados, todo ello
forma parte de la bsqueda de la habitalidad agradable, de la comodidad, que en nuestro siglo ya es
algo de carcter general y constituye un componente de la idea que se tiene comunmente de cmo ha
de ser una vivienda. La respuesta de Asnago y Vender se adhiere a esta tendencia, y la transforma en
arquitectura a travs del rigor y de la decisin en la
eleccin de alternativas, aplicdolos a lo que es espectativa general pero en mod tan radical y carente de compromisos que convierten en poesa la vulgaridad intrnseca de estas espectativas, su miopa,
que reduce la concepcin de la ciudad a las dimensiones de la del simple piso burgus.
No romer con las aspiraciones del simple
ciudadano, sino secundarlas y ennoblecerlas: sta
es la conciliadora actitud que llevaba a los arquitectos novecentistas a escoger, por un lado, el camino
de la literatura y de la historia y, por otro, la utiliza-

4
cin de materiales slidos y cmodos. De esta manera, la burguesa aspiracin al bienestar era sublimada por los novecentistas en ostentacin de riqueza y en superacin del propio pasado. En la burguesa milanesa de los aos treinta, que ha elegido
el fascismo, los conceptos de riqueza econmica y
de riqueza cultural estn dramticamente escindidos, pero los arquitectos novecentistas celebran su
integracin como si sta fuera segura, y este cortocircuito es bien acogido.
Pero lo que atraa a los clientes no era la adhesin a la historia sino al concepto de comodidad.
Demostracin de ello es el hecho de que tanto la
posicin de Asnago y Vender como la de otros arquitectos en posiciones ahistricas o antihistricas,
como Terraghi, pero que igualmente ofrecan esta
comodidad, obtuvieron gran xito, convirtindose
en modelos copiosamente imitados en la construccin milanesa. Tanto fue as que, en la postguerra,
los propios arquitectos novecentistas, habindose
ya convertido en imposible el recurso a la memoria
histrica, darn vida, junto con los racionalista, a
un estilo hbrido, casi desprovisto de retrica historicista pero igualmente tranquilizador, caracterstico en la arquitectura milanesa de los aos cincuenta.
No menos disponibles para la burguesa,
Asnago y Vender proponen por su parte una hiptesis propia de dignificacin de la idea burguesa de
la vivienda, no a travs de recurrir a la historia sino
mediante la sublimacin de las tcnicas constructivas, en la purificacin figurativa de lo abstracto.
El racionalismo, aparte de abrazar con entusiasmo las nuevas tcnicas y los materiales nuevos, haba propuesto un concepto de ciudad que se
concretaba en la ruptura de la manzana y en la apertura de zonas descubiertas, e decir, en el planteo de
una distribucin abierta. Tal propuesta fue rechazada por los novecentistas, que insisten en la aplicacin de la alternativa de edificar la ciudad por compartimentos cerrados. Tambin en esta cuestin la
actitud de Asnago y Vender es de mediacin y bsicamente dirigida a evitar toda ruptura con los hbitos ms comunmente aceptados. Si se comparan sus
edificios de Via Albricci con uno de Luigi Moretti
en Corso Italia, muy cerca de all, en el que la forma
de la manzana es rechazada violentamente y el edificio se convierte en un elemento plstico de ruptura con el paisaje urbano y con sus reglas, se tendr
una clara idea de la diferencia de actitud entre el ro-

mano y los dos milaneses. Asnago y Vender no rechazan la regla impuesta por la costumbre, sino que
la salvan desde dentro. La norma exige una fachada plana? Ser plana pues, pero de manera que esta
misma caracterstica se haga dominante y reconocible. Escoger este camino significa escoger la dignificacin de lo banal, de lo "deja vu", de lo habitual, por medio de una profunda reflexin sobre los
propios elementos que lo componen. la diferencia
entre calidad y rutina se hace sutil, imperceptible:
es confiada a los detalles, a la ejecucin, a la claridad
en la colocacin.
El asunto es diferente en los edificios de
fuera de la urbe. Para Asnago y Vender, la imagen
de la periferia coincide con la de la distribucin
abierta; la de la casa rural con la de la quinta.
La distribucin de la calle Corsica o las casitas de Chiesa Valmalenco y de Barlassina ejemplifican, una vez ms, su pensamiento y sus procedimientos. Una y otras son lo que la gente habitualmente espera y, al mismo tiempo, son, en su excesiva, rgida, abstracta plasmacin fsica, una especie
de cristalizacin de aquella idea esperada. la respuesta a la espectativa comn y la expresin puramente arquitectnica coinciden, a travs de una adhesin alucinada al supuesto inicial.
.
5.- Como ha podido notare, tanto gracias a
la lectura de sus edificios ms significativos como a
travs del anlisis de la actitud de Asnago y Vender
con respecto a la tcnica, el clasificarlos como arquitectos racionalistas y colocarlos dentro de la lnea general de la remodelacin del lenguaje y del
contenido de la arquitectura sera, ciertamente, legtimo, pero a todas luces insuficiente. Incluso porque, junto a la extraordinaria calidad de su lenguaje, a su coherencia y limpidez, en Asnago y Vender
quedan tan slo dbiles rastros de aquella tensin
social e igualitaria que animaba a Pagano.
Se obtiene una mayor aproximacin si se
compara su obra con lade Albini y con la de Figini
y Pollini: arquitectos todos ellos dedicados, aunque en modos diversos, a la investigacin de la parte ms conflictiva dellenguje racionalista: la bsqueda de la ligereza, el uso de materiales nuevos en
pos del efecto de transparencia, la definicin del espacio a travs de la construccin de planos transparentes.
Ni an as, sin embago, se llega a individualizar de manera satisfactoria el carcter de su arquitectura, y la cuestin se complica al observar que

carece, casi por completo, de la caracterstica funcionalista que constitua una parte tan importante
del bagage ideolgico del racionalismo: en Asnago
y Vender los volmenes y las fachadas poseen diseo autnomo, los balcones no estn donde son tiles
sino en donde los arquitectos consideran que conviene, con una visin de composicin de la fachada
ms cercana a los mtodos del diseo de la casa milanesa del XIX que a los dictmenes funcionalistas.
En sntesis, se podra llegar a la paradjica conclusin (no sin un fondo de razn, sin embargo) de
que utilizaban tan bien el lenguaje racionalista precisamente porque no eran racionalistas y no se sentan vinculados a aquellos dictados patticamente
confusionarios (la forma sigue a la funcin, la belleza reside slo en lo til, y as sucesivamente) que redujeron el racionalismo a la aridez mecnica de un
estilo internacional para uso de arquitectos perezosos.
Una vez establecidos cules no eran los
puntos de referencia de Asnago y Vender, las referencias que les permitan compaginar su arquitectura con tanta libertad y adhesin a la cultura de su
tiempo. Nos ayudan a ello los testimonios sobre su
.forma de proyectar. El mismo Vender cuenta que la
idea originaria era dibujada con tizas de colores sobre grandes hojas de un papel que permita borrar
con la ayuda de un simple trapo y corregir fcilmente, igual que si se escribiera en una pizarra.
Eran composiciones siempre en dos dimensiones.
No se haca ninguna comprobacin de axonometra, y la perspectiva era utilizada nicamente para
los clientes. De la destruccin del archivo se han
salvado algunos de estos dibujos en colores, los realizados para la reconstruccin, en 1955, del establecimiento Vigano, en la plaza Cordusio de Miln.
Lo que choca en ellos es su carcter extremadamente sinttico, pictrico. El que de esos bocetos ellos
extrajeran despus diseos de ejecucin extremadamente esquemticos y tcnicos es slo una muestra
de su capacidad de adecuacin a un necesario lenguaje de comunicacin, asimismo filtrado a travs
de un rigor extremo.
Formados en Brera dedicaron, ciertamente, una constante y profunda atencin a la evolucin de la pintura italiana. Amigos de Soldati y de
Ghiringhelli, participaron en las actividades del
grupo de los abstractos milaneses que gravit en
torno de la galera "Il Milione". Veronesi, Licini,
Soldati, Reggiani, Fontana, fueron acaso, junto

con Rho y Radice, del grupo de Como, sus referencias ms prximas, al mismo tiempo que la revista
"Casabella", de Pagano, y la amistad de Ponti.
Para ellos, empero, la pintura no fue solamente un punto de referencia. Como nos cuenta
Luigi Zuccoli, Asnage se pasaba sbados y domingos pintando en el lago de Como, e hizo diversas
exposiciones individuales en la galera" Il Milione".
La ltima de ellas, en 1959. Tambin Claudia Vender prob a pintar, aunque sin llegar a los resultados de Asnago. Resultados, stos, por cierto notables, sin ambages, pues incluso las obras ms recientes, del 1975 al 80, cuando Asnago ya se haba
retirado de la profesin de arquitecto, son de verdaderae categora, con una ligereza y un sentido del
color dignos de su mejor arquitectura.
.
Para resumir, podramos decir que es sumamente probable que Asnago y Vender al componer sus fachadas y el diseo de sus interiores tuviesen en cuenta ms el arte abstracto que el racionalismo, ms la pintura que la arquitectura. Proyectaban como pintores. Esto no solamente explica el
hecho de su libertad con respecto a los dogmas y a
las consignas de la cultura racionalista sino tambin
el de su substancial aislamiento y el de su posterior
y presuroso arrinconamiento. Su arquitectura no se
presta a contraposiciones ideolgicas entre funcionalismo progresista y tradicionalismo no comprometido, porque, an siendo poco funcionalista y
poco comprometida, es, con toda seguridad, cualquier cosa menos esclava de la tradicin.
Para ellos, la arquitectura es arquitectura
tan solo, con total y sorda autonoma de todo contacto ideolgico. Se reduce, pues, a pura belleza,
difcil de instrumentalizar por ninguna tesis histrica dedicada a la demostracin de juicios preconcebidos, y difcil de imitar por arquitectos desprovistos de ideas claras. Pero ni siquiera al llegar a este
punto hemos llegado a una explicacin totalmente
satisfactoria. Su mentalidad de pintores abstractos
aclara muchos aspectos de su forma de actuar, los
coloca de forma satisfactoria en relacin con los mitos de la arquitectura de su tiempo, pero, sin embargo, sus interiores ms bellos estn impregnados
de un animismo, de un natGralismo, de una tal
comprensin del acontecimiento y de su ausencia,
de historia congelada y suspendida, y son, al mismo tiempo, de tal manera leves, decantados, dispuestos con colores tan tnues y uniformes, que
hacen pensar a la vez en la metafsica y en el puris-

5
mo. Movimientos, cuanto menos, bien contrastados entre s.
Y, en efecto, e! panorama artstico de los
aos treinta se presenta separado en dos grandes
vertientes.
Por un lado, la presencia, corprea y etrea
a la vez, de la pintura novecentista, que se inclinaba
hacia tendencias extraas a la metafsica. Un frente,
todava sin acabar de definir de! todo, que bajo el
vago trmino de realismo acumula experiencias
muy diferentes, pero sobre todas las cuales se cierne la sombra de la pintura-literatura, desde Da Chirico y Carra hasta Arturo Nathan, Gigiotti, Zanini
y Usellini. Pintura literaria y, por consiguiente,
histrica, relato y suspensin del relato, presencia
concreta y espera indefinida.
Por otra parte, la irrupcin de las modernas
vanguardias, su rechazo de la literatura y de la historia, la ntida delimitacin de planos geomtricos
de! grupo de los abstractos de Miln y de Como
(Licini, Reggiani, Veronesi, Radice, Rho, Fontana, Soldati) y, tambin, de los escultores (Melotti).
La oposicin entre ambas corrientes es cosa
sabida, y en esta oposicin confluan, como siempre sucede, antipatas y simpatas personales en no
menor grado que las objetivas divergencias de posicin.
Sin embargo, ha de ser forzosamente admitido algn aspecto de separacin menos rgida, alguna circulacin de gustos de uno a otro frente, si
deseamos llegar a una clasificacin de las posiciones
de manera ms cercana a los datos histricos. Yentre estos nexos ha de incluirse la postura de los arquitectos milaneses, tan en relacin con la pintura y
con las ms avanzadas corrientes de! arte.
Ciertamente, bien visible es la insatisfactoria esquematicidad de la identificacin entre racion"lismo y abstraccin. Al compacto pelotn de los
abstractos anteriormente citados debera corresponder Otro pelotn, igualmente compacto, de arquitectos racionalistas. En nuestro caso, y limitndonos a los milaneses, habramos al menos de hablar de Albini, de Figini y Pollini, de Asnago y
Vender, es decir, de los arquitectos ms prximos a
aquella etereizacin de las formas y a aquel mrbido rigor colorista que constituyeron e! Purismo.
Pero la clasificacin no sirve, es en exceso
esquemtica. Es cierto que en los aos treinta los
mencionados arquitectos realizaron edificios -y,
muy especialmente, interiores- que resultaron afi-

nes entre s debido al uso de unos determinados

materiales -hierro y cristal- y de colores puros y
uniformes, y por una tendencia comn a la desmaterializacin y a la transparencia, pero el espritu
que a cada uno de ellos animaba era sumamente diverso.
Con respecto a Albani, muchos han hablado de "realismo mgico", de "vena surreal". En
efecto, existe una suerte de animismo que recorre
las ms expresivas de sus obras y que hacer pensar,
inevitablemente, en e! toro de Picasso hecho con e!
silln y e! manillar de una bicicleta. Materiales modernos, pobres y ligeros, pero con un resultado de
imagen que llega mucho ms all que los simples
materiales en s. Basta pensar en la radio del38 o en
la librera de! 40.
En sntesis, podramos decir que Albini se
sita dentro de un rea que se extiende desde el surrealismo a la metafsica, porque de otra manera no
puede comentarse e! espacio helado, como en suspense, de! Museo de! Tesoro de Gnova, ni la siniestra presencia de las dos antiguas capas pluviales
en sus urnas de cristal (y de la misma manera, y sin
duda alguna, hay que calificar de metafsicos a los
museos de Scarpa).
No es la primera vez que mientras estudiamos la obra de un arquitecto nos encontramos con
puntosoe contacto con movimientos artsticos divergentes entre s, aun cuando la antinomia entre
surrealismo y abstraccin (e! uno fija la historia en
un instante, el otro la sublima en la intemporalidad
de la idea pura) sea menos fcil de definir de lo que
parezca a primera vista y a travs de una clasificacin esquemtica.
Ms concisamente constructivstica y, por
tanto, menos inquieta, es la posicin de Figini y
Pollini, acaso los ms abstractos en sentido estricto: los sosegados espacios que las fotografas nos
permiten apreciar en e! bar Craja y en la quinta-estudio de la V Trienal son airosos y reposados. Hay
incluso en ellos una cierta idea de confortabilidad,
ms bien ausente en el primer Albini.
Pero volvamos a Asnago y Vender. Con
ellos, e! circuito entre purismo y metafsica se cierra
rpidamente: sus heladas sillas, sus espacios de!imitados, e! mismo empleo de los planos por tabicaciones sucesivas, no son sino la introduccin de! acontecimiento esperado (es decir, de la historia) en e!
mundo atemporal de lo abstracto.
Su abstraccin no es objetiva, sino anims-

tica. Proceden por substraccin, descarnando los

interiores, y hacen que gradualmente los espacios
sean ocupados por esqueletos de enseres, por sombras transparentes. En un espacio tan poco denso,
la presencia de una silla con e! respaldo en cruz diagonal se convierte en una fuerte presencia icnica,
evocadora de una humanidad ausente.
De! mismo modo que las famosas sillas pintadas por Da Chirico, las sillas de Asnago y Vender, a travs de su existencia y de la de un espacio
desmaterializado y abstracto, asumen un enorme
poder de evocacin y de nostalgia.
La objetividad de la disposicin abstracta
es subrayada de modo decisivo por la presencia metafsica de estos objetos. Que luego resulte que la
abstraccin y la metafsica hayan sido los polos
opuestos de la historia de la pintura italiana de
nuestro siglo es cosa que a ellos les tiene sin cuidado.
Acaso sea precisamente esta libertad ante
las distintas corrientes, su independencia ante los
odios entre los diferentes grupos de pintores, lo
que permiti a Asnago y Vender la sintetizacin de
los influjos de tan diferentes tendencias.
Pero su sntesis de estos influjos no es una
sntesis en su resultado. A ella llegar (nicamente
Morandi, en la pintura. Slo l logra refundir, en
sus famosas botellas, el tiempo pasado, la espera y
e! rechazo del tiempo. Piacentini, precisamente, le
deca (cito a Aymonino): "Mora ... t siempre haces botellas". En su actitud invariable, l no slo rechazaba medir como los dems, sino que meda de
manera diferente la historia y los hechos.
La sntesis de Morandi acaso queda en Asnago y Vender slo en forma de yuxtaposicin:
ellos injertan la metafsica en la abstraccin, y ambos componentes no se funden, sino que cada uno
se mantiene bien visible. Pero, sin duda, en comparacin con lo atemporal y ahistrica objetividad de
un Veronesi, su lenguaje suena de muy diferente
modo.
Ms exactamente: Asnago y Vender utilizan los materiales de la abstraccin para hacer metafsica. Y de ello resulta una metafsica nueva, camuflada, pero que, en substancia, es metafsica y,
en la apariencia de! lenguaje, es abstraccin.
Ya en los aos treinta Persico haba tenido
una brillante intuicin, aunque no lo haba expr~sa
do con exactitud: "Parece que en Italia, hoy, la arquitectura, al menos con algunos artistas de van-

guardia, aspira a integrar la visin de la pintura metafsica: esta corriente est destinada, posiblemente, a constituir el ms original fundamento de una
arquitectura "italiana" en Europa ("Casabella", junio de 1935).
Este es e! camino que, acaso inconscientemente, recorrieron Asnago y Vender entre los aos
treinta y los cincuenta.
Quiz ahora hay alguna cosa que est ms
clara. Lo suficientemente arquitectos para no ser
interpolados entre las divisiones de las corrientes de
los pintores, lo suficientemente pintores para no
sufrir la influencia de los limitadores lugares comunes de la cultura funcionalista, y, por lo tanto, en e!
fondo, ni pintores ni arquitectos, trabajando en
una especie de "tierra de nadie" entre las dos culturas, ignorando ambas, Asnago y Vender nos han
dejado algunas de las ms bellas obras de arquitectura del moderno Miln.
Renato AIROLDI

LA VANGUARDIA LCIDA
Una conversacin con Josep Llus Sert
Pg. 74

Nos ha parecido oportuno aprovechar una

breve estancia en Barcelona del arquitecto Josep
Llus Sert, que viajaba de Bastan a Pars, para recoger sus opiniones de hoy, despus de tantos aos de
fijacin entorno del GATCPAC. La conversacin
que "Quaderns" mantuvo con l en los salones de
un hotel de nuestra ciudad fue por estos derroteros.
Sert (hojeando Quaderns). Vi a Coderch en
verano cuando fuimos a su casa solariega de Espolia. Lo encontr bien. Siempre e! mismo, Coderch.
Es un tipo muy especial. Tiene un inters por la calidad, una gran apreciacin. Yo le tengo mucho respeto. En muchas cosas, especialmente polticamente, no estamos de acuerdo. Nos conocemos desde
hace muchos aos ... Eso est muy bien (mirando la
casa Ugalde, "Quaderns" nm. 144).
Este es Rafols. Es una persona interesante.
Recuerdo que una temporada nos mand hacer un

6
recorrido por la obra de Pere Blai. Es interesante
porque Pere Blai representa el renacimiento, aqu,
en Catalunya.
Q. A Pere Blai lo descubri prcticamente
Raols, no?
S. Si, l realiz una serie de estudios exhaustivos. Nos llevaba a diferentes pueblos para
ver cosas, con aquella modestia que tena tan simptica preguntaba a los alumnos si aquel edificio
nos pareca d Pere Blai, y l era la autoridad. Yo lo
apreciaba a Raols.
Q. Este es un resurgimiento. Hay una especie de reencuentro de la arquitecutra verncula.
("Quade;rns" nm. 145,7 construcciones).
S. Esto es un poco aventurado. Mirad, nosotros, cuando empezamos aqu, introducimos
algo en aquel momento revolucionario: la cubierta
plana. Se poda realizar tcnicamente. No se poda
hacer en los paises nrdicos pero aqu haca muchos
aos, siglos que se haca. De manera que, volveis a
poner las cubiertas inclinadas. A mi parecer, una de
las cosas que se puede aprovechar mejor de estos
climas es disfrutar de la cubierta, pero si uno quiere
sacrificarse ... no hay ningn impedimento. Desgraciadamente yo en Boston no lo puedo hacer.
Q. En Ibiza las cubiertas planas las hacen
con cmaras de aire? Porqu los problemas trmicos y las humedades en las cubiertas planas ...
S. Las casas ms antiguas las hacan con
troncos de sabina. Ponan lo que podan para
aguantar y despus con algas secas aislaban y forn;aban como un colchn. Despus de esta preparacin echaban tierra, una tierra arcillosa, porque el
campesino no tena porque saber los clculos para
hacer una cubierta echaban tanta tierra que al final. .. Pero como aislante era muy bueno. All llueve poco y cuando llueve mucho recogen el agua con
un cubo hasta que para de llover, hacen un remiendo y esto les sale ms barato que hacer un tejado.
Q. Vemos en tu obra, tambin en el movimiento moderno pero concretamente en tu obra, la
influencia de la arquitectura verncula.
S. S, es algo que nos impresion muchsimo la primera vez que estuvimos en Ibiza en el ao
treinta y dos. Fue un descubrimiento en el sentido
de que mucho de lo que se haca en el centro y en el
norte de Europa, ya los tenamos aqu. Por ejemplo, las cubiertas planas y los volmenes bastante
primarios y sin decoracin ya existan. Eran privilegios de la pobreza. Puig y Cadafalch fue a buscar-

lo a Nuremberg: la casa Amatller es de inspiracin

del gtico alemn. Nosotros defendamos el gtico
cataln, San Mara del Mar y Pedralbes, y entablabamos discusiones con los profesoress que pretendan que las iglesias y los monumentos catalanes
no acababan en tejado como los del Norte porque
se les terminaba el dinero, y no. Santa Mara es perfecta, aquellos y aquel terrado ... !
Q. Es muy importante en tu obra, en la valoracin de los aspectos constructivos, que las cosas realmente se aguanten, funcionen. Me parece
que mora se nota que muchas obras tuyas se conservan, a diferencia de las de otros seguidores del
movimiento moderno.
S. Yo viv una poca, siempre lo agradecer, en la que exista la Escola del Treball y en donde
la gente aprenda el oficio. Hoy nos encontramos
que hay arquitectos que producen obras en serie.
Exista el oficio de albail. Eran ellos que hacan estas bvedas cerradas. Trabajaban como los ngeles
y tenan manos de plata. Esto desapareci con la
guerra.
Q. Esto es la obra de Mitjans ("Quaderns"
nm. 145).
S. De Mitjans lo que me gusta es este sistema de construir las galeras otra vez. Porque lo que
se hubiera podido hacer es volver la manzana del
revs y que aquellas galeras dieran a la calle, en vez
de hacerlas de piedra artificial que hacen la vida tan
difcil. La galera es una gran cosa que crea unidad.
Cuantas ms cosas haya semejantes, mejor. .. La
"manzana de la discordia" era de Barcelona la que
estaba ms cuidadosamente ligada. Ahora todas
son mucho ms discordantes que sta.
Q. S, principalmente, son feas, porque
aquella aunque discordante ...
S. No, no era tan discordante.
Q. Este es Duran i Reynals.
S. Este s que fue un gran chico.
Q. Tu lo trataste, no?
S. S y tambin a su hermano.
Q. En el ao 1935 construy casas clsicas
y tambn la de la calle Crcega.
S. S, que estaba muy bien.
Q. Empezamos? Bueno, ya hemos empezado. Mirando las revistas ya se han sugerido muchos temas.
S. Pues empecemos porque yo, tengo la
costumbre de dormir la siesta.
Q. Antes t decas que no te daba miedo lo

clsico.
S. No solamente no me da miedo sino que
yo en mi tiempo haba sido admirador de ciertas cosas. Recuerdo que con Josep Torres y Sixte Yllescas recorrimos Italia buscando obras de Palladio.
Construcciones que no se encontraban con un pajar en el porche, abandanodas. Y no era precisamente un momento de renacimiento palladiano.
Tena los libros de Escamozzi -planchas de cuero
que encontr en "els encants"- en la biblioteca.
Despus se apoderaron de todo lo que yo tena all
porque haba libros de otras clases y les parecieron
subversivos o no se qu y desaparecieron. Despus
he encontrado buenas ediciones de Palladio; vine a
Barcelona pocos aos despus de la guerra y encontr una primera edicin de los cinco libros en la calle de la Palla. En el Museo Metropolitano de Nueva
York, en un escaparate, v el mismo libro y me dije:
"que estpido eres, te lo has dejado all". Telegrafi a Prats y le dije: "Cmprame el libro si lo encuentras". Y lo encontr.
Siempre he tenido inters por toda esta
evolucin. Pero a mi lo que me parece es que hay
cosas que son inaplicables, y que hay que utilizarlas
con una cierta conciencia. No creo que se pueda recortar una ventana con un fronte y un diseo de
Miguel Angel y pegarla como si ligado a proporciones. Pensad que la mayora de estos detalles estaban
en habitaciones que tenan un techo alto, que tenan
menos ventanas y en proporcin no deban estar
tan juntas porque todo era una habitacin que tiene
ocho pies de altura y diez de 'ancho, ya no encaja,
porque el orden es totalmente diferente. Lo que es
ms importante es el ritmo, la proporcin. No se
trata de funcionalismo sino de hacer algo que sea un
conjunto harmnico. Incluso mirado solamente
desde un punto de vista esttico, ve cambiar todas
las proporciones. Despus, con el costo de las
construcciones, resulta la versin barata de lo que
haba antes. Y cuando se ha visto lo bueno y se ha
estimado lo bueno, con unas proporciones correctas ... pues a m no puede gustarme porque todo
esto no es una versin viva.
Q. Esta es una ventaja suya y es que conoce
lo clsico aunque no lo utilizara. En cambio, los
que hemos sido educados con el movimiento moderno ...
S. Perdonad por lo que os dir, pero en la
escuela de Harward, cuando vino Gropius, haban
desalojado toda la sala donde haban las reproduc-

ciones en yeso de esculturas clsicas. Lo haban barrido, lo haban limpiado todo. Yo llegu en un
momento en que era el primer partidario de que se
restablecieran los cursos de historia, no como se
, impartan antes, sino con conceptos nuevos de evolucin del espacio y de evolucin de elementos
constructivos hasta llegar a la poca moderna:
como todos los factores que haban cambiado obligaban a una expresin de aquella poca. Desde este
puntO de vista juzgo lo que se ha hecho ltimamente. Yo haba tenido en mi estudio aJenks, que mora
es el inventor del post-modernismo. Es un buen
chico, pero francamente ... Este nombre es un poco
estpido porque en realidad no es postmodernismo
sino premodernismo "premoderno". El nombre
de "moderno" empieza a ser algo muy difcil de definir. Prefiero utilizar el trmino arquitectura contempornea, que es la de su tiempo, la del momento
que va cambiando. En las primeras revistas del
GATCPAC ya criticbamos columnas que estaban
puramente pegadas porque obligaban a construir
unas pareces fenomenales, innecesarias. Creo que
una de las cosas que todava no hemos encontrado,
a pesar de los esfuerzos de hombres de mucho talento es la ornamentacin de los edificios. La estructura no presenta ningn problema ... Se pueden
hacer fantasias, pero el ornamento -ahora que estis preocupados por las fachadas- no se ha encontrado.
Q. T antes decas que estas fachadas neoclsicas de Barcelona estaban muy bien.
S. Si en aquella poca no se tena demasiado inters en diferenciarse del veino: si el balcn
volaba 80 cm el del vecino tambin. N o se si eran las
ordenanzas municipales o qu. Y el hierro forjado
era harmnico. Tena una lnea de cornisas ms o
menos iguales. Urbansticamente, este deseo de
que cada casa y cada arquitecto se expresen diferentemente, para m es un desastre. Aquel segundo
tramo de La Castellana en Madrid, que es un muestrario de estructuras violando el sentido de la gravedad! Uno encima de un pie, el otro con dos, etc.
Esto es lo peor que pueda hacerse.
Q. Pero esoes consecuencia, en parte, de
algunos principios del Movimiento Moderno.
,
S. Los principios de Pla Cerda estaban mucho mejor. Hoy, yo no tengo ningn inters que
todas las ventanas sean de cristal. Aunque sea todo
cristal a veces no hay vista. Despus, si la habitacin est en desorden, cuando estn encendidas las

7
luces, no es nada para ver sino para volver la cabeza
y no mirar. No hay forma de resolverlo. Entonces
la forma que habamos encontrado era utilizar los
elementos traslcidos. La ventana tiene tres funciones, .una de vista, otra de ventilacin y otra de claridad. Se puede iluminar sin dar vista y se puede ventilar sin dar ni claridad ni vista. Y ya tenemos tres
el~mentos para jugar con la fachada. Yo creo que
hay vocabularios que podran enriquecerse. Le
Corbu fue un da al estudio del S.O.M. y le ensearon kilmetros y kilmetros de "pilotis" y de ventanas horizontales, y les dijo: "miren, est bien que
ustedes sean cien por cien modernos pero un ciento
veinticinco es demasiado!".
Q. Es que aqu, frente al fenmeno del
post-modernismo hay gente que defiende bastante
el S.O.M. Nosotros, por lo que conocemos, nos
parece, primero, que ya murieron hace aos y ...
S. Queda el nombre, porque lo que pasa
all es como el Coca-Cola; cuando un nombre tiene
prestigio, est reg}strado y no puede utilizarlo nadie ms. Se han repetido mucho. Despus tiene cosas dispersas y mucha gente. Hay 14 arquitectos a la
cabeza de todo esto. Pero en el grupo que tienen en
Chicago, son mil y pico, trabajando. Ya escapa
completamente de las dimensiones ordinarias, no
tiene nada que ver.
Q. Desde aqu se continua viendo como la
parte de arquitectura ms fiel al movimiento moderno.
S. El S.O.M. es una mquina. Es como una
marca de fbrica y todava se vende. Ya sabeis como
es el mercado. Mientras un producto se venda ... se
continua fabricando. Yo creo que en arquitectura
estamos en un momento de transicin, muy difcil.
Para m, la arquitectura va muy ligada al urbanismo. Resolver arquitecr.ura es hacer cambios radicales en el terreno urbanstico. Dentro de un solar
hay un nmero limitado de cosas que se pueden
realizar, pero el problema a resolver realmente es
un problema dentro del urbanismo, dentro del sistema de calles, circulaciones, distribuciones. Mientras no se produzca un cambio, solo saldrn setas
un poco diferentes de un lado o de otro. Yo quisiera
que las partes ms antiguas quedaran como estn,
respetndolas, y que se adaptara lo mejor posible lo
antiguo de calidad, pero sin desvirtuar el ambiente.
Hoy se dice: esto es muy bueno, pero lo dejan todo
arrasado.
Q. Nosotros somos gente educada dentro
.

de los principios del movimiento moderno, y queramos preguntarte, a t que has conocido a todos
los maestros importantes del movimiento, si eran
gente que conoca bien la arquitectura clsica.
S. Fueron gente que haban nacido en una
poca que se conoca muy bien la arquitectura clsica, y Mies tambin. Estaban muy influenciados por
las construcciones populares y no se avergonzaban
de ello. A nosotros nos ocurri algo parecido. Yo
creo, sin querer herir a nadie, que han eliminado los
estudios histricos, y ha llegado una nueva generacin .-que no es precisamente la vuestra- que est
reaccionando contra todo eso, que son completamente analfabetos en arquitectura. Hacen arquitectura propia de gente ignorante, sacada de catlogos
de construcciones sin tener sensibilidad ni idea de
lo que estn haciendo. Esto que se est haciendo de
volver al estudio de la historia espero que ayude.
Lo encuentro muy bien. Lo que no encuentro tan
bien es tratar de aplicar cosas que no son aplicables.
Hay que resignarse.
Q. Tu trabajaste en el estudio de Le Corbusier uno o dos aos. Cmo era?
S. Era un despacho muy simptico. No pegaban a nadie. Para nosotros era una escuela.
Aprend all todolo que s. All tenamos discusiones con l de como y porqu se hacan las cosas. El
era muy abierto en este sentido. Nos hicimos muy
amigos. Conservamos esta amistad toda la vida. En
modo alguno eran analfabetos. Y lo que condenaban lo conocan.
Q. Qu impresin te produce tu obra realizada?
S. Hombre, algunas me gustan y otras no
tanto, pero son cosas de estas que como uno las ha
visto nacer! De la casa de la calle Muntaner, por
ejemplo, me acuerdo de los esfuerzos realizados
para conseguir unos tabiques muy delgados para
aquellas persianas enrollables. Todo eso era un trabajo de chinos. Que en el tejado no sobresalieran
las torres del ascensor. Despus he hecho cubiertas
muy planas. Es lo mismo que pasa con los vestidos
de las mujeres. En un momento dado, fue moda
acentuar las curvas y los relieves y despus todo
plano. Yo no soy partidario ni de la cubierta plana
ni de la cubierta inclinada, sino de la mixta, la que
tiene unos lugares accesibles posiblemente ajardinados. Esto Gaud lo hizo en la casa Mili y en la
casa Gel1. Yo lo encuentro ms interesante que la
cubierta tradicional y la cubierta totalmente plana.

En la vida uno va cambiando y va. viendo las cosas.

La arquitectura est hecha de una serie de equivocaciones y cuando tienes el edificio terminado ves
donde ha fallado. El prximo ya saldr mejor. Hay
que pasarlo tan bien como se pueda porque como no
es un oficio muy bien pagado, pues por lo menos
disfrutemos. Y hay que tomarlo en serio y con entusiasmo. A veces se toma demasiado en serio. Y
estos artculos tan largos que se escriben sobre arquitectura no tengo ni tiempo ni paciencia para
leerlos. Adems no entiendo la mitad del vocabulano.
Q. Tu debes seguir la arquitectura americana Qu opinin tienes de ella?
S. No la conozco demasiado. Mira, yo creo
que la arquitectura no va por paises. Va por el sol, el
ciclo de 24 horas, los vientos dominantes, lo que
crece, etc. La arquitectura americana del norte, est
mucho ms cerca con la del Canad que la del Caribe y la de Florida que tiene ms en comn con la de
Cuba.
Q. En cambio los Five hacen el mismo tipo
de edificio construyan en la frontera del Canad o
donde sea. Y el S.O.M. igual.
S. Lo siento por ellos. Yo tengo respeto por
la obra de Meier. Creo que es un buen arquitecto:
he visto algo que ha hecho ltimamente, menos inquieto, que estaba bien. Creo que tambin que
todo se complica demasiado. Le Corbusier estaba
un da con su "cubiculum modulorum", el de 2,26
por 2,26 por 2,26 contemplando un proyecto -lo
miraba de arriba a abajo-y finalmente exclam "la
arquitectura moderna no es tan complicada como
eso"!

TEORIA DE LA FORMA
DE LA ARQUITECTURA
EN EL MOVIMIENTO
Pg.

84

1. La mecanizacin y el fin de la mmesis

"Con el enorme desarrollo de la tcnica y de

la metropoli nuestros organos de percepcin han aumentado su capacidad de desarrollar simultneamente funciones pticas y acsticas ... los Berlineses
atraviesan la Postdamer Platz; hablan mientras
oyen el claxon de los automobiles, la campana del
tranva, las seales acsticas del autobs, el gruir
de los carruajes, el ruido del metro, las voces de los
vendedores de peridicos, los sonidos procedentes
de unos altavoces, etc. y pueden discernir todos estos estmulos acsticos. Por el contrario un pobre
provinciano que por casualidad haya llegado a esta
misma plaza se queda tan aturdido frente a la multitud de impresiones, que se detiene como un bloque
de piedra frente a un tranvia en movimiento".
Laszlo Moholly Nagy. Malerei-PhotographieFilm. Bauhausbucher n. 08, 1927. pp. 43.
La cita con la que se inicia este artculo
plantea las coordenadas en las que inscribir la experiencia de la modernidad: la tcnica y la metropolis
como nuevas premisas. Fundamentar sobre estas
nuevas bases la arquitectura del presente, tal parece
ser el objetivo de las formulaciones tericas que
desde el final de la primera guerra mundial hasta la
gran crisis del 29 se intentan, desde distintas instancias, en Europa.
En cualquier caso, para las posiciones de
vanguardia esta fundamentacin parece que arranca de un choque directo, tambin problemtico,
con la realidad vivida del universo tcnico y metropolitano como situaciones en las cuales las condiciones de la vida social y la sensibilidad individual
tienen unas caractersticas nuevas y distintas respecto a las que se haban producido en el pasado.
Sigfried Giedion dedic uno de sus ms inteligentes estudios a la incidencia de la mecanizacin en la sensibilidad moderna. Se trata de un estudio antropolgico; lo que l llam una historia annima, es decir el estudio de condiciones las productivas, pero tambin de percepcin del entorno, que
afectan de raiz el orden y las c'liactersticas de la situacin de los individuos que en ellas viven. La mecanizacin es para este autor un dato primero, una
caracterstica nueva que marca de tal modo las condiciones de la vida y del cambio que slo considerndola ser posible entender, por ejemplo, las caractersticas de la arquitectura de los tiempos modernos.
No es difcil aadir que las condiciones que
la mecanizacin en el mundo moderno plantea es-

8
tn ntimamente ligadas a la innovacin tecnolgica
de la que este mismo mundo dispone y, por consiguiente, de las imgenes y experiencias que este
mundo tecnolgico desarrolla.
Ya Viollet-le-Duc, en sus Entretiens, hablaba de que la arquitectura del futuro debera asemejarse ms a la locomotora de un ferrocarril que a
cualquier modelo histrico de la arquitectura del
pasado, manifestando con ello que la arquitectura
estara en el futuro ms condicionada por la nueva
tecnologa y por el nuevo entorno artificial que esta
producira que por cualquier referencia a las soluciones contructivas o estilsticas propias de la arquitectura del pasado.
Se establecan as dos criterios fundamentales que se irn explicitando a lo largo de textos, manifiestos y reflexiones de los tericos de la arquitectura decimonnica.
En primer lugar la exigencia del zeitgeist,
del espritu del tiempo capaz de manifestarse en las
imgenes y en un "estilo" nuevo, adecuado a las
nuevas condiciones del entorno tecnolgico. Esta
exigencia es vivida corno una necesidad y por lo
tanto se convierte en una bsqueda directa de los
motivos figurativos propios de lo tcnico corno
aproximacin primera que permitir superar las
imitaciones estilsticas del pasado.
Pero tambin, en segundo lugar, aparecer
el deseo de expresin de lo propio del tiempo presente corno un acto moral de sinceridad y de autenticidad -la lmpara de la verdad Ruskiniana- que
llevar a establecer el carcter ejemplar de lo tcnico. La referencia a la naturaleza que haba sido el
justificante ltimo en la teora esttica arquitectnica del pasado se desvanece desde la identificacin
de un nuevo universo al que es posible remitir la
creacin artstica y la legitimacin de sus produc,tos. El mundo artificial de lo tcnico aparece corno
garanta y corno antinaturaleza, corno substituto
del orden racional perfecto del cosmos clsico que
es desplazado por la racionalidad producida, cambiante y humana del artificio tcnico.
Ahora bien el fenmeno de la mecanizacin detectado por Giedion no solo es un fenmeno tecnolgico sino tambin metropolitano, puesto que est en la raiz de los procesos de divisin social del trabajo que permiten reorganizar el universo productivo en funcin de la estrategia del consumo.
La reorganizacin de la produccin obrada

por la mecanizacin afecta por igual a los comportamientos del productor corno del consumidor.
Los procesos naturales son fragmentados en molculas que hacen de cualquier experiencia una simple
suma de estmulos y espuestas encadenadas. La primacia de la psicologa del comportamiento en la
cultura de finales del siglo XIX y en la sociologa
metropolitana posterior tienen en realidad un claro
nexo en comn. Para la psicologa emprica la conducta es reducible a unidades de estmulos y respuests que permiten la identificacin precisa del
funcionamiento de un organismo frente a un cuadro de condiciones establecidas. La descomposicin de cualquier comportamiento en este repertorio de unidades simples es la primera condicin
para establecer la maleabiidad del comportamiento
social, econmico o esttico de los individuos y por
lo tanto para poder pensar en la reorganizacin de
estos datos y de las consiguientes cadenas de comportamientos de un modo similar a corno se organizan las unidades de trabajo en la cadena de montaje.
La experiencia metropolitana desarrollada
por la sociologa simmeliana arranca de la atomizacin del comportamiento nervioso corno dato primero que establece la posibilidad de un universo
organizado por la yuxtaposicin indiscriminada de
estmulos, formando redes cambiantes de solicitaclOnes.
La racionalidad que la mecanizacin establece es la que se origina con la reorganizacin de la
conducta metropolitana en la cadena de montaje y
en e! espectculo que las masas consumidoras dan
de si mismas corno nuevo marco de estimulacin.
Tambin por este camino la antigua naturalidad ha
de ceder el paso al mundo antinatural del artificio
que se presenta corno nueva naturaleza, no ya necesaria, sino libre, sujeta a manipulacin, reorganizacin y cambio.
La arquitectura moderna deber, por lo
tanto, partir en las formulaciones de la modernidad, de la exp'eriencia de la prdida de las garantias
naturales corno dato primero y con las caractersticas del universo tcnico y metropolitano corno
nuevas condiciones de percepcin y de experiencia
de lo real.
A esta situacin las primeras respuestas de
un cierto radicalismo desde el punto de vista de la
sensibilidad parecen ser por una parte las cubistas,
y por otra las futuristas.
El cubismo significa la rotura de un modo

de ver central, esttico y permanente, esencializable, en favor de otro mltiple, yuxtapuesto y fragmentario. Ciertamente la explicacin de la realidad
que el cubismo ofrece es de alguna manera una explicacin sometida a la transformacin de lo perceptivo. De la estabilidad perspectiva se pasa a la
acumulacin de un mundo de experiencias que no
remite a lo esencial sino que solo puede ofrecer de la
realidad una versin coyuntural. Pero e! cubismo,
por otra parte, era desde el punto de vista de las experiencias a las que se remita, enormemente convencional y rehacio a la figuracin del universo tcnico caracterstico de la nueva metrpoli. Ciertamente, a travs de ternas convencionales de interior
o de bodegn, el cubismo exploraba la nueva estructura molecular de la percepcin. Pero no es menos cierto que ello se hacia, corno en un laboratorio, no frente a los grandes y nuevos espacios metropolitanos sino en general en la cotidineidad del
caf, del espacio privado y de la intimidad del lugar
del ocio y de lo aparentemente neutro.
El fu turismo, en cambio, exaltando el universo tcnico corno nueva naturaleza, revisaba la
iconografa a la que las obras de arte deban referirse aun cuando no fuese nada radical en el vehculo
formal con el cual esta experiencia debiera ser expuesta. En e! fondo el futurismo, al igual que los
tratadistas decimonnicos, tena una concepcin
mimtica del arte, es decir, estaba convencido de
que la obra de arte deba repetir con sus palabras
bellas la realidad en la cual el arte se produca. De la
misma manera que en la poca clsica la obra de arte
imitaba el universo natural y e! inters de sus productos estaba en su habilidad por reproducir selectivamente lo bello natural-ars simiae naturae- as
en la modernidad, pensaban los futuristas, e! objetivo del arte era asemejarse a la nueva naturaleza
tcnica y metropolitana, repitiendo sus imgenes,
imitando sus estructuras formales, explicando por
simple reproduccin en lo artstico, la realidad exterior a la propia obra de arte.
Cubistas y futuristas coincidan as en un
punto. En su concepcin todava mimtica de la
realidad. La funcin del arte era para ellos, corno
dice Philippe Junod, una funcin de transparencia.
Las obras de arte y de arquitectura deban ensear,
reproducir e imitar la realidad, an cuando esta realidad fuese vista corno algo distinto de la realidad
que nutri la experiencia artstica del pasado. Es
cierto que nuestra percepcin de la realidad es ms

atomizada, diversa y mltiple y ello justifica la nueva representacin cubista. Pero, con todo, en el cubismo sigue dominando lo re-presentativo sobre lo
estrictamente creativo o inventivo. Dicho con otras
palabras, e! cubismo desarrolla una nueva aproximacin a la representacin de la realidad pero sigue
considerando que el objetivo de lo artstico estriba
en esta representacin.
Asimismo el futurismo, sin introducir profundas modificaciones en los medios o estructuras
representativas piensa tambin que es la representacin de la realidad lo que ha de caracterizar al arte
del futuro. Lo nico que preocupa al futurismo es
e! cambio de referente. La realidad de la que hay
que hablar ya no es la Victoria de Samotracia sino
del moderno automvil lanzado a gran velocidad.
Sin embargo en ambas propuestas no aparece todava explcito e! cambio ms substancial de
la condicin moderna de! arte que es la de la prdida
de la nocin de imitacin corno nocin fundamental. La idea de que la obra de arte no se refiere a nada
fuera de s misma, ni reproduce ni imita nada sino
que ella misma es una invencin, un objeto nuevo,
producido desde el esfuerzo creativo de un sujeto,
es, en realidad, la caracterstica esencial del arte en
la modernidad.
La confianza del mundo clsico estriba en
la idea de la existencia previa de un orden, de una
naturaleza a la cual puede acudirse corno garanta
del orden artificial del arte, de la tcnica y de la sociedad.
Pero la artificiosidad puesta de manifiesto
en la experiencia metropolitana y en el mundo tcnico van ms all de la simple idea de una nueva naturaleza que substituye a la antigua. Por el contrario lo propio del mundo moderno es su concepcin
de la realidad misma corno producto, fruto del azar
o de la invencin.
Desde Kant la concepcin del mundo sensible ya no es imaginable al margen del mundo proyectivo del sujeto, o lo que es lo mismo el mundo
natural no existe ms que corno una produccin,
corno e! resultado final de un esfuerzo constructivo
de las facultades de! sujeto sin las cuales la realidad
misma carece de entidad y de consistencia.
Para el arte esto significa que el obi.eto artstico ya no depende de un orden previamente establecido al que deba imitar o al que deba ajustarse de
algn modo, sino que la obra de arte crea su propia
realidad y por tanto sus propios referentes.

9
El romantiCismo haba vislumbrado esta
nueva situacin desde el momento en que entendi
que la produccin artsitica no reproduca la estructura del mundo sino sobre todo la estructura del
alma. Pero todava en esta posicin el alma del sujeto era concebida esencialstican;Jente como la realidad permanente a la cual se poda remitir el orden
de la obra. El pensamiento moderno, por el contrario, ha entendido, desde Fidler hasta Semper, que
en el arte era primordial la dimensin inventiva y
creadora, productiva en suma, y que la versatilidad
de lo real, al igual que en la experiencia de la mecanizacin, no era sino una consecuencia del abandono de todo soporte esencialista concebido como
dato previo al puro momento de la creacin.

2. Le Corbusier, entre el clasicismo y la modernidad

"De plus en plus les cnostructions industrielles, les machines s'establissent avec des proportions,
des jeux de volumes et de matieres tels que beaucoup d'entre elles sont de veritables oeuvres d'art
car elles comportent le nombre, c'est a dire, l'ordre
(L'Esprit Nouveau n. o 1, 1920).
La obra terica de Le Corbusier puede decirse que arranca precisamente del cubismo y sus
formulaciones fundamentales se producen desde el
texto que publica junto con Ozenfant en 1918
Aprs le cubisme, hasta las sucesivas aportaciones
que va publicando en la revista L 'Esprit Nouveau
desde 1920 hasta 1925. La posicin de Le Corbusier y Ozenfant es a la vez crtica y receptiva respecto al cubismo. La crtica e centra especialmente en
dos puntos. En primer lugar el cubismo no est en
consonancia con la atmsfera tcnica y cientfica
del tiempo presente. El artista cubista no represen_ta con suficiente vigor las caractersticas de la nueva
civilizacin. En segundo lugar el cubismo carece de
una sistematizacin y claridad terica suficiente
como para frontar las exigencias de este mundo
moderno. La exigencia de pureza, que quiere decir
la claridad y rigor en los principios formales desde
los que la forma se construye, parecen ser las causas
principales de los reparos que Ozenfant y Le Corbusierplantean frente al cubismo.
Pero, por otra parte, su actitud es desde
otros puntos de vista abiertamente receptiva y continuista respceto al cubismo. El cubismo, an

cuando no ha llegado a crear un lenguaje depurado

y adecuado a los tiempos modernos, ha puesto, en
cierto sentido, las bases al establecer una simplificacin y diversificacin de los repretorios geomtricos bsicos sobre los que la forma debe asentarse.
En la ambiguedad de Le Corbusier frente al cubismo, para l a la vez signo de modernidad que hay
que defender y mantener y signo de inadecuacin
que hay que superar, est inscrita toda la ambiguedad de sus propias posiciones como terico de la arquitectura en los tiempos modernos.
La actitud ante lo moderno es aparentemente del todo abierta y receptiva. Con una confianza que en algn momento parece ilimitada, Le
Corbusier se vuelca en el mundo de lo industrial y
de lo mecnico. Conocemos por una parte sus llamadas a abrir los ojos ante la realidad tcnica que
nos rodea. Des veux qui ne voien pas parece un alegato futurista a mirar con atencin las formas de los
trasalnticos, los aviones y los automviles como el
nuevo universo al que habr que referir la produccin artstica. Las lecturas de Henry Dubrenil, primer divulgador francs del taylorismo, reflejan ya
en estos aos su preocupacin por las nuevas formas de organizacin del trabajo y por los cambios
productivos que ello significa.
Sin embargo este aparente entusiasmo de
Le Corbusier por las formas tcnicas y por el nuevo
mundo industrial deben ser valoradas en su significado desde el momento en que expresan un ideal de
pureza geomtrica y matemtica que quiere trascender lo anecdtico de la iconografa maquinista y
lo inmediato de la imitacin de este universo formal.
Refaire la nature en termes de cylindres,
eones et spheres, como dijese Cezime a Emile Bernard en 1904 y como repitieran los pintores cubistas, significaba tambin para Le Corbusier trascender las formas inmediatas, ya fuesen de los estilos
histricos ya fuesen de los nuevos "estilos", aparentemente substitutivos de aquellos, encarnados
por los objetos tcnicos.
Rehacer la naturaleza significaba producir
la realidad desde un orden elemental del cual eran
deudores tanto el mundo de la mquina como el
mundo del arte y de la arquitectura. No se trataba
de proponer una teora de la imitacin de lo mecnico, sino de sealar que el universo de la tcnica
obedeca a unas razones puras que eran nmero y
forma, es decir geometra y por lo tanto algo pura-

mente mental. A ese orden mental era al que el arte

y la arquitectura deban tambin plegarse, formulando sus propias formas-tipo-, es decir las formas
que respondian con mayor exactitud y perfeccin a
las razones del nmero y de la geometra.
Entre las obras de arquitectura, de cualquier poca, y las obras de la tcnica, que nunca han
sido lo mismo, existe para Le Corbusier una analoga profunda que estriba en su racionalidad numrica y geomtrica. Es esta analoga la que permitir
llegar a un arte que siendo libre de mimetismos mecnicos, sea en cambio profundamente anlogo al
mundo tcnico propio de los tiempos modernos.
Es evidente que cuando Le Corbusier est
planteando estos puntos de vista est intentando
hallar un punto de contacto entre la realidad de la
mecnizacin y la del arte, mediante el cual establecer un sistema ideal en el que uno y otro encontraran su racionalidad y explicacin.
La teora acadmica francesa en la segunda
mitad del siglo XIX haba depurado ms y ms las
razones en las cuales la harmona y el orden artstico se sustentaban. Charles Blanc en su Grammaire
sustentaba, por ejemplo, el carcter artificial de la
belleza, de modo que esta ya no poda colegirse directamente de la observacin de la naturaleza sino
que haca de una pura abstraccin mental por la
cual la construccin artstica adquira unidad interna. Por otra parte el positivismo esttico haba establecido, en Guyau, por ejemplo, el carcter permanente de las reacciones psicofsicas de los individuos frente a ciertos estmulos. Con ello encontraba fundamento la creencia de que el carcter arquetpico de ciertas formas o relaciones estaba fundmentado ms en la estructura preceptiva que en un
orden natural exterior, platnicamente concebido
como reflejo de un orden csmico inmutable. Es
por la misma razn que Taine en sus Lessons d'esthtique, distingue lo que l llama caracteres elementales y caracteres secundarios de la belleza, intentando as diferenciar lo fundamental de lo accesorio, lo asentado en la razn y el nmero de lo dependiente de la casualidad o de una corriente de
gusto.
Le Corbusier que tuvo estas lecturas en
poca de estudiante de Artes y Oficios en Chaux
des Fonds, reflejar en sus escritos esta dependencia de un cuerpo terico de orgen acadmico pero
que ha sido sometido a un proceso de abstraccindel orden natural al orden mental- y de confronta-

cin con el nuevo universo tcnico -de los estilos

del eclecticismo a los objects du type- de su teora
de la forma pictrica y arquitectnica.
La idea de orden en Le Corbusier es profundamente ambigua y de ah la diversidad de interpretaciones a que ha dado lugar. Ciertamente hay
en l una voluntad de zambullirse en las condiciones del nuevo mundo tcnico sin que ello signifique
el abandono del deseo de alcanzar, con el tiempo,
fatigosamente, como objetivo final hacia el cual deben tender todos los esfuerzos lun cierto orden,
formal y social, que es invocado a travs de sus textos con machacona insistencia.
Pero no es menos cierto que este orden, en
la medida en que parece establecer un punto de sntesis, un lugar de reunificacin de la atomizada experiencia moderna, signfica, de algn modo, un antdoto, una defensiva coraza justamente contra el
desorden y la casualidad que la experiencia contempornea parece mostrar como propia del mundo
mecanizado de la tcnica y la metrpoli. Hay en Le Corbusier un resto de pitagorismo por el cual ms all de la realidad inmediata per- ,
cibida y cambiante existe un orden oculto, inmutable e inmobil al cual es necesario remitirse para poder escapar de la disolucin que el puro fenomenismo moderno parece proporcionar.
Al invocar la geometra de los objects type
como razn de la forma artstica y arquitectnica
Le Corbusier, al igual que Sorian en su teora esttica, intenta un ltimo esfuerzo por establecer un
puente entre la razn y el mundo real. Un mundo
real con el que era necesario enfrentarse no slo en
actitud contemplativa sino activa y productivamente.

J. De la percepcin a la produccin

"Creemos, afirmamos y nos fijamos- como

objetivo la lucha por la representacin de la nueva
construccinutil del mundo" K. Malievich. Unovnis-Articulo-Programa. Iskousstovo n. 01. 1921.
El texto de Alexander Bogom::zow de 1914
"La pintura y los elementos" significa la primera
formulacin del objetivo que en los prximos aos
perseguirn tanto Kandinsky como Malievich: establecer una gramtica abstracta y libre para la produccin de obras de arte. En este texto de 1914 se
formula por vez primera la idea de que el elemento

10
ms simple de lo pictrico es el punto. El punto es
la unidad carente de dimensin y de color a partir
de la cual es posible ir deduciendo el sistema de elementos de ndole ms compleja que se obtienen por
simple acumulacin de estas unidades primarias.
La sucesin de puntoS da lugar alas lneas. Las relaciones de lneas generan los planos. Los sistemas de
planos organizan espacios. "Punto y lnea frente al
plano" de Kandinsky resultado de los cursos dados
en la Bauhaus plantear un razonamiento semejante. Es la construccin de un repertorio puramente
morfolgico, abierto e ilimitado, por el cual se alcanzan paulatinamente, nivel a nivel, las distintas
reas de' la forma en la produccin material y en la
produccin artstica.
Este modo de ordenar la realidad fsica,
susceptible de ser producida por la mano de un artista o por el poder de una mquina, significa el olvido de toda suerte de jerarquias o de compartimentos estancos establecidos por la tradicin cultural europea -artes mayores y menores; arquitectura, escultura, pintura, etc.,- con sus tradiciones
propias y sus tcnicas autnomas para definir una
concepcin continua, creciente y puramente abstracta de composicin 'de la realidad.
El mbito del arte aparece como un todo,
con sus distintos estadios y con los problemas inherentes a cada uno de ellos, pero estando todos ellos
ligados por una ley de organizacin nica que reune bajo el mismo discurso cualquier parcela de la
produccin artstica.
Pero adems de esta nocin unificadora, de
la que participa no slo la experiencia suprematista
rusa sino tambin, en buena medida, el neoplasticismo holands y el mismo expresionismo abstracto kandinskiano, la nocin realmente nueva es la de
que todos estos estadios se caractericen, en su configuracin, por no obeder a las leyes imitativas sino
a purso criterios de construccin formal.
Hay, por ejemplo en Malievich, la conciencia clara de que el arte no es un trasunto de la realidad natural o de la realidad tcnica, sino, en todo o,
un producto de esa misma tcnica. Su contenido no
est referido a otra cosa fuera de s mismo, ni siquiera a leyes o ordenes que acten como eternos
garantes de la racionalidad o veracidad de su manera de ser. Por el contrario, al decir que la obra de
arte y de arquitectura es construccin no se alude
simplemente a la dependencia de unas determinadas tcnicas "constructivas" sino que este trmino

est utilizado en el sentido de que estas obras son el

resultado de acciones productivas, operaciones exnovo, por las cuales el objeto es originado, de alguna manera, desde algo que anteriormente no exista.
La idea de que lo artstico es bsicamente
creativo y no mimtico se hace central en este planteamiento por el cual toda la realidad del universo
tcnico, lo artstico, lo utilitario y lo industrial, son
siempre el resultado de un trabajo en un proceso de
produccin. En el caso de la arquitectura esta nueva
manera de ver las cosas tiene un doble enfoque. Por
una parte desde el punto de vista ms abstracto de la
teora de la forma de la arquitectura ha de ser considerada como el puro nivel de la produccin espacial
con el cual se llega a tridimensionalidad del objeto y
a la incorporacin del movimiento perceptual en l.
. Pero por otra parte, repensar la arquitectura como
espacio producido no se puede hacer slo desde la
abstraccin de la forma sino sobre todo desde la nocin de produccin aplicada a toda la realidad.
Cul es entonces el elemento primario
desde el cual empezar a pensar la construccin de lo
arquitectnico? En 1923, el mismo ao en que Le
Corbusier publica su Vers une architecture, AdoIf
Benhe publica su Der moderne zweckban (literalmente: "la construccin moderna de lo que tiene
una finalidad") (28). Benhe, que haba formado
parte del intenso clima del Arbeirat fr Kanst berlins, plantea con mayor radicalidad que Mendelshon en 1919 o que Gropius en 1925, la nocin nueva de lo arquitectnico elaborado en los aos inmediatamente anteriores que acabar dominando la
concepcin de la arquitectura moderna tal como se
explica en la Bauhaus a partir de entonces.
La casa es el primer material "de la arquitectura. Este dato, que se contrapone en Benhe a la
formalstica consideracin de que lo primero es la
fachada o la planta, significa que el elemento inicial
de la arquitectura es lo perceptivo. El habitat de la
casa no es considerado como algo estructurado y tipificado sino como un cmulo de comportamientos que pueden ser objeto de medicin psicofisiolgica y de clasificacin y organizacin. Analizando
algunas obras de la arquitectura reciente Benhe liega a decir que en la casa de lo que se trata es de acoplarse a la vida misma, y a la funcin.
Pero el conjunto de las funciones que en la
casa son elementales y pueden ser identificadas,
atomizando el "flujo vital" a travs de repertorios

de estmulos y conductas, han de organizarse en

algo que haga de ellos un cierto sistema eficaz. Para
Benhe esta primera sntesis de los puros datos de la
conducta han de obtenerse en la definicin formal
de los espacios adecuados a ellos.
La arquitectura de vanguardia, al igual que
otros campos de la produccin artstica incorpora
de este modo la nocin de espacio, utilizada hasta
entonces por la psicologa experimental y por la
teora esttica, para definir con ella la concrecin de
los elementos bsicos del comportamiento funcional que se trata de satisfacer.
La idea de que la arquitectura es un hecho
espacial se ha empezado a desarrollar en el pensamiento europeo slo con una dcada de anticipacin. Prcticamente con Wickoff yRiegl se inicia la
utilizacin de la comprensin espacial de los fenmenos artsticos y la idea de que el comportamiento
tridimensional de nuestra percepcin est necesariamente ligado a la envolvente espacial en la cual
este se produce.
Formular, esta nocin sinttica de espacio
como hace Benhe en el texto mencionado, significa
establecer un sistema escalonado anlogo al ya citado de Bogomazow por el cual, en trminos formales, se sintetizan los dispersos datos perceptivos en
una unidad formal de ndole global a la que se denomina el espacio.
Pero queda todava por cerrar este proceso
con el tercer estadio de la actividad arquitectnica
por el cual se postula que, an cuando lo espacial
constituya la sntesis formal de lo arquitectnico,
con todo el objetivo final no puede ser el espacio en
s mismo sino la produccin total de la realidad.
"No el espacio modelado sino la forma de la realidad" es el ttulo del ltimo captulo del libro de
Benhe que estamos comentando.
Con esta aseveracin se seala que el objetivo del arte y de la arquitectura no se acaba en s
mismo aunque no proceda de otra cosa ms que de
l mismo. Crea la realidad y constituye la produccin y el perfeccionamiento de esta misma realidad.
La arquitectura, como arte mximamente
sinttica, se consuma haciendo la realidad, marcando las pautas de las conductas que en ella se han de
producir y por lo tanto planificando lo que en la
misma realidad deber suceder.
De alguna manera no solo se han borrado
las fronteras entre el arte y la vida sino que lo que
convencionalmente seguiramos llamando arte y

arquitectura parece, segn esta concepcin, tomar

la delantera en elflujo vital en el que la produccin
pretende incidir, con el fin de conformarla en funcin de una idea de racionalidad y orden eficaz del
propio proceso social.
Cuando en 1928 Laszlo Moholly Nagy publica el libro terico ms caracterstico de la concepcin de la arquitectura propia del Movimiento
Moderno, Van material zu architektur, no estar
haciendo otra cosa ms que explicar, de manera clara
y ordenada, en un manual pedaggico que ser libro de cabecera de los arquitectos europeos y americanos a partir de 1945, lo que ya unos aos antes
ha sido formulado por otros tericos.
La concepcin de la arquitectura como espacio, es decir sntesis de material, lneas, planos y
texturas, para hacer de este espacio diseado un
instrumento de intervencin y de prediccin del
comportamiento colectivo, estar formulada con
toda su contundencia.
La obra de arte, simple construccin eficaz
de estmulos perceptivos ordenados a la consecucin de comportamientos previamente planificados, significa tanto la consumacin del ideal rom tinco de la disolucin del arte en la vida como la ciara definicin de que el objeto del arte no slo no se
aparata de la vida misma sino que, de alguna manera, la produce segn un plan previamente establecido de racionalidad social y de economa colectiva.
El ejemplo de la mecanizacin por el cual la
realidad no era seguida por la tcnica sino inventada
y producida por ella, a partir de su atomizacin y
posterior reorganizacin, se traduce en esta concepcin de lo artstico en la que tambin el proyecto
organizativo va literalmente por delante de cualquier realidad previamente dada.
La gramtica abstracta de puntos, planos y
espacios se convierte en la herramienta formal con
la que descomponer formas y conductas con el fin
de, libre e ilimitadamente, reorganizarlas en unos
sistemas de objetos en los cuales la eficacia psicofisiolgica ha ocupado el lugar de la experiencia esttica clsica.
Ignasi de SOLA-MORALES

11

SIR JOHN SUMMERSON:

UN CRITICO TOLERANTE
Pg. 92

Hace ya varios meses "Quaderns" solicit a

Sir John Summerson un artculo sobre la obra de Sir
John Soane. No fuimos nada originales. En aquellos
momentos muchas revistas estaban preparando la
publicacin de obras y textos sobre el arquitecto. El
mismo haba hecho ya dos artculos y, evidentemente, no pudo complacer nueStra solicitud. Pero; a pesar de todo, Summerson nos invit a tener una charla con l. El resultado de todo ello es la entrevista
que ahora publicamos realizada por Marta Thorne.
La conversacin se centr en la figura de Soane y,
como es lgico, se diversifif: en torno de los temas
ms relacionados con la polmica cotidiana que
Summerson -conservador del Museo Soane- sigue
desde su privilegiado observatorio del 13 de Lincoln's Inn Field.

Q. Hitchcock dice que la obra de Soane no

resume una poca como lo hizo la obra de Cren o
de Adam anterior a l o de Shaw un siglo ms tarde.
Cmo ve el lugar de Soane en la historia de la arquitectura?
J. S. Hitchcock tena razn. Soane es una
figura nica y es muy difcil compararlo con otros
arquitectos de la Europa de su tiempo. Muchos tiene tendencia de mirar hacia Francia y Ledoux, por
ejemplo, pero no existen ataduras slidas. A veces
se vuelven hacia Schinkel, que vivi un poco ms
tarde, pero tampoco es posible demostrar ninguna
autntica influencia. Hay que aceptar el hecho de
que Soane es un fenmeno nico, surgido de la tradicin inglesa, muy influenciado por ciertas teoras
importadas del extranjero, como por ejemplo el racionalismo de Laugier y lo pintoresco ingls. Estas
dos influencias se sumaron en la obra de Soane. Sera, posiblemente, una forma apropiada de describir el fenmeno Soane: la confluencia o la fusin
del racionalismo y lo pintoresco.
Q. Cuales seran las caractersticas de esta
fusin?
J. S. Se encuentran en algo que podemos
llamar lo "primitivo". Soane interes mucho por lo
primitivo. Esta es de hecho la frmula de Soane el
r'lr;()n1';~tn() ,lp

b ,imnliricl::lcl v b ,imnlirirbcl clp

lo pintoresco la Naturaleza, la columna que es simplemente un tronco de rbol con corteza includa.
Esto es a la vez racional y pintoresco. Para dar otro
ejemplo, lo racional exige una geometra muy simple. Las bvedas de Soane no tienen encofrados.
Cualquier clasicista internacional tendra que colocar inmediatamente encofrados en estas bvedas.
Esto es una especie de primitivismo que Soane
combina con una iluminacin muy romntica, que
constituye lo pintoresco.
Q. Cuando podra ser visto el desarrollo
del estilo Soane?
J. S. Yo estoy hablando de los aos setenta
del siglo dieciocho, que fue el periodo creativo ms
importante de su vida, cuando Soane tena algo ms
de cuarenta aos. La obra de Soane fue dividida
aproximadamente en cinco fases: el periodo de estudiante, el periodo inicial (1780) de prctica profesional; el perodo medio (1791-1806); el periodo
pintoresco (1806-21) y el ltimo periodo (182133). Fue durante el periodo medio que construy la
casa nmero 12 de Lincoln's Inn Field y haba precisamente terminado el edificio del Banco de Inglaterra.
Q. No parece correcto decir que despus
del 1790 Soane solamente us su estilo personal.
Los ejemplos ms notables, al contrario de lo que se
comenta, pueden ser vistos en su uso del gtico.
Qu piensa Ud. de todo ello?
J. S. A partir de 1790 Soane tena realmente
dos estilos. Siempre poda usar el estilo acadmico,
internacional, neoclsico. Construy algo del Banco de Inglaterra en este estilo y los dibujos para los
palacios reales. Pero tambin tena su estilo propio.
Es esto que sorprende y choca a mucha gente y les
despierta curiosidad. Soane jug estos dos juegos a
la vez, pero no simultneamente. Tena un tercer
juego que no le gustaba, que era el gtico.
Q. Cree que su retorno al gtico en el ltimo periodo representaba una nueva investigacin
de expresin arquitectnica?
J. S. No, su retorno al gtico fue una condicin impuesta. Tena que ampliar los edificios del
Parlamento y, como era arquitecto del gobierno, le
fue exigido el uso de este estilo. Despus, alguno de
sus clientes de las provincias se lo pidieron. Soane
no poda rechazar un encargo solo porque no le
glhStaba hacer gtico.
Q. Ha dicho que Soane haba estado influino nor p\ npo,b,i,i,mo internacional de la ooca.

Ves a Soane ligado de alguna manera ms especfica a la cultura inglesa de la poca?

J. S. S, es posible, pero es muy restrictivo,
muy tnue. Naturalmente que su maestro George
Dance influy en l. Visto a una escala ms amplia,
la cultura inglesa de la poca estaba interesada en lo
primitivo. Por ejemplo, Wordsworth, que fue el
heredero de la gran tradicin potica inglesa se interesaba por los campesinos y por su lenguaje, aquel
lenguaje tan sencillo. Esto representaba una obertura que abandonaba la tradicin formal de Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, etc. Wordsworth salta hacia
el lenguaje comn. Esto puede ser visto como un
paralelo con Soane, aunque yo no inisistira demasiado porque los paralelos son a menudo engaadores.
Q. Otra caracterstica de Soane que parece
que fue inspirada por Allhallows Church, de Dance, es la omisin. Podra comentar el uso de esta
tcnica por parte de Soane?
J. S. Soane llev la omisin mucho ms all
que Dance. En el retorno normal del Renacimiento, las hornacinas estn en un plano esfrico y la bveda en otro, pero el tipo de bveda que Soane utilizaba siempre era de una sola pieza. Aunque sea
una pieza de geometra perfectamente simple, usa
una lnea incisiva para darle ritmo y hacerla elocuente. Un ejemplo claro de esta tcnica se encuentra en el Museo Soane. La bveda de la Sala de AImu~r-zp es lo ms simple posible los tmpanos y la
misma/bveda van juntamente en una curva.
Q. Hablando del interior del museo, una
caracterstica notable es el uso de la ilusin el gran
nmero de espejos que dan la ilusin de espacio
donde el espacio no existe, la falsa curva final de la
Sala de Estar al Sur. ..
J. S. Soane tena una frase que utilizaba algunas veces, la cual era "la poesa de la arquitectura". En mi opinin, quera decir iluminacin interesante, excitante. Hablaba frecuentemente de la
"lumiere mystrieuse" francesa que se relacionaba,
creo yo, con la iluminacin a partir de lugares recnditos en los altares de las iglesias. Deca de la
Sala de Almuerzo en su libro que tena este algo frecuente de la poesa de la arquitecto. No es solamente iluminacin, es un sentido de transparencia que
puede ser visto en esta casa. En el comedor, que sala, por encima de los vasos grieogs, a un patio, si la
luz es buena se pueden ver ms bustos y antiguedades a travs de la ventana del otro lado. La pared

opuesta es un espejo que refleja el techo, y por eso

tenemos la ilusin, hasta que no lo examinemos con
mucha atencin, que el espacio se st extendiendo.
Esto pasa en toda la obra del estilo personal de Soaneo A menudo hay gente que dice: "Este es el pionero del plano abierto, el predecesor de Frank
Lloyd Wright, el precursor del jurgenstil". Pero no
tienen nada que ver el uno con el otro.
Q. En el seu article Space and Anti-Space
(Espacio y antiespacio), Petersin dijo que Soane fue
el primero que investig sobre el concepto del espacio negativo, considerando el punto de partida hacia una arquitectura que ocupa el espacio de la pared (Como en las hornacinas de ventana en la sala
de estar; este sorprendente descubrimiento que la
pared gruesa contiene un espacio transversal que es
continuo entre las superficies externa e interna.
Esto es una caracterstica en toda la obra de Soane?
J. S. Me parece que es lo que l pretenda.
Es otra forma de decir lo que haba dicho ha. Ved
otra vez la bveda de la Sala de Almuerzo. Lo interesante aqu es que la bveda tiene la misma curvatura por fuera y por dentro. Con otras palabras, es
muy fina. Ahora, si llevais esto al extremo de tener
la misma cosa fuera que dentro, el todo acabar por
desaparecer. N o encontrareis esta caracterstica en
la obra de nadie ms en aquella poca.
Q. A nosotros nos parece que el espacio y
la proporcin fueron utilizados con ms xito, o
por lo menos con ms dramatismo, en los trabajos
institucionales de Soane que en su arquitectura domstica. Est Ud. de acuerdo? Estos conceptos
fueron usados primero en la arquitectura institucional y despus "transplantada" a la domstica?
J. S. Antes de ser un arquitecto institucional, Soane era un hombre que construa casas de
campo y algunas de sus primeras experiencias en su
estilo propio fueron en obras domsticas. La primera vez que utiliz el tipo de bveda iluminacin
que he mencionado fue ya en Wimpole, en 1791,
pero el Banc Stock Office le sigue inmediatamente.
Cuando recibi el encargo del Banco, en 1792,
construy muy pocos edificios excepto su casa.
Muchas veces digo a la gente cuando les muestro el
museo, que si son capaces de imaginar algunos aspectos dos o tres veces mayores, podrn tener una
idea muy aproximada de como era el Banco de Inglaterra. Por eso, en este sentido, se podra decir
que Soane experimentaba en lugares ms o menos
diferentes a la vez.

12
Q. Como es posible que el uso que Soane
hace de la ornamentacin concuerde con su estilo
personal?
/ J. S. Ya me he referido a la simplicidad y
esto se puede ver muy bien en el Bank Stock Office.
Soane abandon capiteles, cornisas, arquitrabes y
entablamentos. No hay orden clsico, pero hay un
sustituto. Soane, el arquelogo, recuerda la ornaIl1entacin clsica en este marco simplificado. Es un
orden simblico que constituye en fajas verticales
en relieve en lugares donde se esperara encontrar
columnas o pilares delicados paos de yeso introducidos en las paredes, tallas en los tmpanos, etc.
Q. Soane entendi el concepto de movimiento en su arquitectura. Fue eso influencia de
algui'en en especial?
J. S. La mejor forma de entender las cosas
es recordar que Soane tena una enorme admiracin
por Vanbrugh. Lo consideraba el Shakespeare de la
"arquitectura. El motivo por el cual admiraba tanto
a Vanbrugh es porque trabajaba las formas arquitectnicas de tal manera que craeba movimiento.
Sir Joshua Reynolds tambin lo admiraba precisamente por lo mismo, diciendo que las cualidades
dramticas o pictricas de los edificios de Van"" brugh, la manera como se movian hacia delante y
hacia atrs en proyeccin y recesin, mientras presentaban a la vez una silueta excitante, es una cuestin de disposicin de las masas. Soane ve en Vanbrugh exactamente los mismos mritos. En la obra
de Soane hay un movimiento horizontal en el pIano, pero haya la vez silueta.
Q. Por las conferencias de Soane, si las leemos con atencin, podemos deducir que no le gustaba demasiado Palladio, aunque fuera un neoclsico, Ve alguna influencia de Palladio en la obra de
Soane?
J. S. En sus conferencias, Soane dijo cosas
sorpredentes. Por ejemplo, declara que Palladio no
tena un sistema muy estricto, aunque por otro lado
se pueden encontrar bustos y ediciones antiguas de
Palladio en el Museo. No me parece que estimara
mucho a Palladio. Lo admiraba como una de las
grandes figuras de la arquitectura, pero, como muchyos de su tiempo estaba muy cansado de Palla c
dio. Los hermanos Adam estaban francamente hartos de l. Cuando James fue a Vicenza, estaba realmente furioso al respecto. Soane no prestaba mucha antecin a Palladio. Lo consideraba importante, pero anticuado. Yo no dira que se encontrara

influencia de Palladio en la obra de Soane.

Q. En respuesta a una de tus conferencias
hace algunos aos, un arquitecto declar que Soane
estaba intentando siempre escaparse a las tcnicas
de su poca y que si hoy viviera, estara muy ocupado con experiencias en prefabricado (?) Est de
acuerdo?
J. S. No puedo estar de acuerdo, de ninguna manera. Soane no erea un gran experimentador
teconolgico. Era muy hbil y cuidadoso en el uso
de materiales. Siempre usaba los mejores, pero
nunca nuevos materiales solamente por utilizar
algo nuevo. En este sentido podeis compararlo con
John Nash, que siempre lo haca y se meta en problmas porque utilizaba hierro o estuco, por ejemplo de la forma ms precipitada y aventurera. Pero
Soane no estaba interesado en el estuco y pocas veces lo utilizaba. Lo que le gustaba era la obra de ladrillo de gran calidad. Esta casa en el nmero 12 de
Lincoln's Inn Field, fue construida con ladrillo
blanco que era el ladrillo ms caro de la poca, aunque era muy poco usado.
Q. Soane parece ser una figura llena de conflicto, en competicin con muchos arquitectos de
su poca, uno de los cuales Nash ...
J. S. Soane era una personalidad muy difcil, muy introvertido y obviamente muy neurtico.
Tena un miedo exagerado a la crtica. si lo comparamos con Nash, recordamos el Nash en trminos
de exteriores, amplios panoramas, largas terrazas.
Sus interiores no tiene nada de notable. Pero, cuando recordamos a soane siempre recordamos sus interiores. Es muy curioso.
Q. En sus conferencias, Soane parece tener
una opinin diferente des mismo de la que tenan
otros arquitectos. Cmo podras explicar eso?
J. S. Soane tena dos actitudes hacia la arquitectura que antes he mencionado, pero nunca
hablaba de su estilo personal. Solo pensaba en la
forma de dominar el estilo clsico internacional. Es
obvio que no quera hablar de su estilo. No conozco ningn escrito donde haya hecho comentarios
sobre s mismo. Es muy curioso. Podramos pensar
que lo intentara para justificarse, pero no, lo guardaba para s mismo. Naturalmente, quedaba terriblemente herido cuando la gente se rea de l. Y la
gente se burlaba, especialmente de Dulwich o de la
fachada de esta casa.
Q. A qu atribuye la reciente resurreccin
de arquitectos como Soane, Lutyens, etc.?

J. S. Hay una resurreccin de los grandes

. arquitectos del pasado. En parte se trata, naturalmente, de una fuerte reaccin contra el Movimiento Moderno en la generacin ms joven. Consideran las consignas y frmulas del Movimiento Moderno como vacas y sin valor. Piensan que el movimiento Moderno empuj a la arquitectura en una
direccin totalmmente equivocada, eliminando los
placeres de la arquitectura, las delicias de la arquitectura y no nos di nada a cambio. La reaccin
contra el Movimiento Moderno ha sido enormemente fuerte. La gente lo odia -en mi opinin equivocadamente- pero estas cosas pasan. Eso, me parece, ha provocado que la gente mirara hacia el pasado con ms atencin. Pero hay un aspecto que
tiene que ver con la extraordinaria popularidad de
la historia de la arquitectura. David Watkin escribi un libro titulado The Rise of Architectural History (La resurreccin de la historia de la arquitectura). De una actividad de amateur hace unos 30 o 40
aos, esta especialidad se convirti en una actividad
profesional. Actualmente incluso hay una asignatura de Historia de la Arquitectura en la universidad de Londres, Bedford College. El principal personaje de todo esto es Howard Cullhane; en Oxoford es un gran especialista. Pienso que muchos arquitectos han sido desviados hacia esta literalmente
ms erudita esfera de la historia de la arquitectuta.
Q. Esta popularidad de la historia de la ar~
quitectura y el mayor inters en la conservacin de
edificios irn juntos?
J. S. La conservacin de edificios es muy
diferente de la conservacin de la historia de la arquitectura a travs de lo escrito. El anlisis especializado del material reunido es una cosa que tiene
raices emocionales ligeramente distintas de la conservacin de edificios. Claro que van juntos, y una
tendra que controlar realmente a la otra.
Q. Cmo definira los actuales esfuerzos
de conservacin aqu en la Gran Bretaa?
J. S. La conservacin ha ido muy pero muy
lejos a travs de hacer listas de edificios que era necesario proteger, no necesariamente con una proteccin absoluta, pero con una proteccin temporal para que el edificio sea preservado hasta que se
pruebe que no es tan valioso y pueda ser reemplazado. Hay un nmero muy grande de edificios en estas listas. El problema actual es saber si demasaidas
cosas han sido esterilizadas, si el pas puede mantener tantos edificios antiguos, porque el uso de un

edificio viejo es muy limitado. Hay la sensacin de

que la essterilizacin de grandes reas de las ciudades ha ido demasiado lejos. Otra cosa es la lista de
edificios recientes. Esto crea una situacin muy curiosa. Hemos estado evaluando y conservando edificios de pocas cada vez ms cercanas a nosotros.
Qu pasar cuando lleguemos tan cerca que estaremos confeccionando listas de edificios que fueron
acabados"ayer? Es una situacin muy rara. Veremos quizs un arquitecto con la idea que acabar un
edificio el martes i que el mircoles lo ver ya en las
listas de edificios valiosos. Pienso a menudo qu
saldr de esta posicin, qu vendr despus. Francamente, no lo s.
Q. Estara de acuerdo con una exposicin
en la escala de la reciente exposicin de Lutyens sobre cualquier otro arquitecto?
J. S. Podramos presentar diversos arquitectos del pasado que merecen una exposicin si se
pudiera reunir suficiente material sugestivo: Wren,
Vanbrugh obviamente, i quizs Hawksmoor. O
quizs los tres juntos. S, esto sera una idea.
Q. Hay alguien entre ellos i Lutyens?
J. S. Adam? No estoy seguro. Chambers? Creo que no. Muy bueno, muy refinado,
muy interesante, pero no realmente grande en el
sentido de Wren, Vanbrugh o Hawksmoor. Respecto a Soane, creo que hay bastante sobre l, aqu
en el museo Soane.
Q. Y sobre arquitectos del siglo XX?
J. S. Respecto a arquitectos del siglo XX,
los nombres que pensamos enseguida son Le Corbusiery Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies era muy bueno,
pero restringido, sin la profundidad o el genio de
Wright o Corbu.
Q. Cuales cree que fueron las razones que
haba detrs del espantosos xito y de la escala de la
exposicin Lutyens?
J. S.La exposicin de Lutyens tuvo lugar
como parte de la revulsin contra el Movimiento
Moderno y de la tendencia a mirar hacia el pasado:
el pasado reciente. El tipo de pasado olvidado hace
muy poco tiempo, una resureccin de los eduardianos y de toda clase de gente que pensbamos que
habamos olvidado. Un retorno a la estimacin de
estos arquitectos. Lutyens era absolutamente cabeza y msculos por encima de cualquier otro arquitecto ingls de su tiempo y probablemente por encima de cualquier arquitecto europeo de la genl:'racin nacida alrededor de 1870.

13
Q. Qu piensa de la arquitectura postmoderna?
J. S. La arquitectura postmoderna, el clasicismo postmoderno, todo esto est promovido por
el seor Jencks. El tiene una palabra para todo y su
ltima palabra, llamada clasicismo postmoderno,
consiste principalmente en dibujos, dibujos muy
bonitos. Me parece que estamos desarrollando una
especie de arquitectura de dibujos bonitos que las
personas pueden ver sin hacer el edificio. Una arquitectura que no est construida, ser algo bueno
o malo?
Supongo que lo principal de la arquitectura
es que los edificios construidos sean de buena calidad, si podemos sabe qu quiere decir esto. Es importante, claro, que no se caigan y que no dejen entrar la lluvia, cosa que pasa en muy pocos edificios
modernos. Un mal extraordinario es que hay edificios que reciben medallas -la History Library de
Cambridge, la University Library de Reading-, .
edificios extraordinariso, pero que cuando estn
construidos dejan pasar la lluvia. Esto, claro, es un
fallo de tecnologa.
Q. Se ha referido a la obra de Stirling. Qu
opinin tiene de su actitud hacia la arquitectura,
J. S. Yo he estado siguiendo la carrera de
James Stirling con el ms gran inters, porque pienso que es brillante. Su Engineering Leicester fue la
.primera cosa que notamos. All hace del modernismo un juego. Lo veo como un gran jugador. Tiene
un gran poder de anlisis. Acostumbra a desmontar
el programa de un edificio y ver sus distintos elementos. Tiene una imaginacin fuerte y ve como
estos elementos podran ser juntados como un divertimento, un juego. en cierta manera es como hacer un monograma de nuestras iniciales de tu nombre y intentas formar con ellas un patqSn que comprenda las letras con el mximo de economa, pero
al mismo tiempo convirtindose en un patrn excitante. Me parece que esta es la actitud de Stirling.
Sus edificios a veces parece que salen muy extraos,
como la Cambridge Library.
Q. y sobre el Stirling postmoderno?
J. S.EI tiene un dibujo para la Tate Gallery
que ya no me gusta tanto. Podramos llamarle clasicismo postmoderno. Es una barrera de temas sacados del Movimiento Moderno y juntados con algunas ideas obviamente surrealistas. Se trata, una vez
ms, de un juego elaborado. Refleja quizs la varie,btl tl" ~rt" motl"rno en la Gallerv. npro vo cliscuto

que alguien pueda divertirse con la arquitectura.

Q. Qu quiere decir con esto de divertirse
con la arquitectura?
J. S. Es una cosa que tengo en la cabeza.
Cuando escribo al seor Jencks tengo tendencia a
decirle: "No se toma usted la arquitectura con seriedad". Y l dice: "por qu no? Para qu estamos
aqu? La arquitectura es para dar alegra y placer".
Entonces me quedo muy aturdido, aguanto mi dignidad y declaro que la arquitectura es un asunto
muy serio. Aunque es verdad que nos podemos divertir en el centro mismo de la arquitectura hay y es
necesario que haya una intensa seriedad.
Q. Dnde ve esta intesa seriedad?
J. S. Por ejemplo, Lutyens la tena. Muchas
de las casas de Lutyens son alegres, frvolas en cierta manera y modeladas con beldad. Es una mezcla
de alegra, frivolidad y seriedad. En la catedral de
Liverpool, por ejemplo, fue lo ms serio posible y
el resultado es magnficiente. En general, lo que me
preocupa es la profundidad de la serierdad que se
encuentra en el centro del pensamiento arquitectnico. No me parece que est presente en el pensamiento del seor Jencks y esto es lo que no me gusta
del seor Jencks y de la arquitectura postmoderna.

(Traduccin de Santos Hernndez)

English translation
SENTIMENT AND REASON
Page9

The understanding of architecture from its

tangible presence, from its emphasis on appearance
is something written into the very framework of
the new realistic sensitivity so widely spread
through our culture. From this we proceed to the
evaluation of material and physical factors, the rediscovery of ornamentation, the desire for permanence which re-introduce the necessity for the
constructive element -al! indications of the phenomenological approximation to the experience with
which realism operates. This is an attitude which
has its roots in the ltalian controversy in the 50's
and 60's about the role of tradition and deisgn context which had so much influence on Spanish architecture during that period, and which resulted in
the idea of the need for an architecture of realism,
understood as more appropriate to the mechanisms
of production and consumption in direct contrast
to the idealism of moder ortodoxyl. Although the
time which has passed now makes it necessary to
insist on undying faithfulness leading in new and
daring directions, we find in both periods a
. drawing closer to the project, from the emphasis on
the specific and concrete rather than from reference
to abstract prototypes, from the prime importance
of what one feels, indeed from the emotions.
Faced with this, it is appropriate to recal! as
a distinctive characteristic of modern art the essentialist approximation to reality proposed by abstraction where fol!owing a neo-Platonic logic 2 , the
withdrawal from appearance continued to underline priority of the Idea. In this way, it laid the foundations for artistic activity over the abstract exercise of reason from which modern sensitivity could
deduce ataste for accentuating the immateriality of
things on discovering the essential underlying idea.
On the other hand, the evaluation of the
abstract also has always been sustained by al! those
ideas which tend to accentuate the normative and
transferable character of the design, concerned
with reducing the visible world to eternal, immutable forms, renouncing al! that individua lit y and
originality in which we are accustomed to see the
distinctive character of creativity.
While the underlying pragmatism of ap-

plied modernity always gave rise to points of encounter between the models approved by tradition
and the forms proposed by the new sensitivity,
producing a means of access to the project on
which the critics and design practice has recently
centered their attention 3 , it also was responsible for
the intense and ofeen sterile eclecticism in which we
see flailing about much of the architecture which
declares itself faithful to modern orthodoxy in
which the "pastiche" and the academic "revival"
appear to the strategies employed in the face of the
chal!enges of invention. Al! this makes us forget
that earlier insistence on the value of the idea, on
conceptual radicalism on which modern architecture had built its figurative universe as a founding
for its operative presence.
The present interest in the architectural
work of de la Sota, which expresses very wel! this
realism-abstraction dialectic, is examined briefly in
the following pages. The survey of his work is incomplete but it illustrates the main line along which
his work has evolved 4 . The work of de la Sota in
this way may be seen as a long process for, in his
words, "enjoyin things right there where they almost stop being" , which would explain the change
from his early work (Town of Esquivel, house for
Dr. Arce) to his manture work (Offices of the Civil
Governor in Tarragona, Maravillas Gymnasium,
Competition for Head Offices of Aviaco) as a long
road on which, like an initiation rite, it is necessary
to go along shedding everything that is pure accessory, everything that is mere phenomenon to arrive
at the essential, at the Idea.
From this, too, we arrive at the taste forthe
elemental for the minimal, for utilizing (a word
much loved by the architect) the excellence of
things, expressive of the desire for dematerializing
things with which this architecture tries to build.
Invention here should be understood as the function of logic over reality, for it is this reality which
will organize the project with an extreme radicalism, justifying the creation of the new as a resulto
We see here the fruit of the Demiurge-like faction
of the artist possessed by reason, reaffirming this
form in architecture as the outcome of a practical
intelligence.
These are works -and this is our motive for
publishing them- which remind us that art has always made emotion and reason compatible.
Josep Llus MATEO.

NOTES
(1) Oriol Bohigas "La polmica idealismorealismo", Hogar y Arquitectura No. 47, 1960. (2)
A study of the history of art based on the Platonic
idea can be found in the article by E. Panofsky,
"Idea", Ediciones Catedra, Madrid, 1977. (3) The
present-day interest in the work of architects like
Asplund and, in another sense, such as Salvisberg
whose work we show here, is a faithful reflection of
this attitude. (4) For a summary of the architect's
work complementing our material, see No. 2 of the
journal Arquitectura, Madrid, 1981. (5) A. de la
Sota "Sobre Chillida", Revista Nacional de Arquitectura.

ALEJANDRO DE LA SOTA
Page 12
THE GREAT AND HONOURABLE ONPHANHOOD
Not very long ago, in class, we talked of
the five great; it was a way of understanding ourselves, as possibly they were not five (more? less?),
but it was their representation. Our pertinacity was
great.
In short, the fact is that a series of concepts
were easy, because the five great had done:
"Human scale"? not talking about it.
"Architectonic spaces", not naming them.
"Pre-production", not being in stupid fashion.
Conjuncture architecture, out of a "conjuncture".
Solved lots of problems without "problematic".

Take care of the suburbs, going to them,

without "environmental desing".
"Brutality", with all politeness.
Creating ways of doing, styles, without
"stylistics" .
Qualities, without "textures".
They worked and this was their "protest"
(people talk of synthesis of all).

They wished and understood a "just society" and aristocratic, far from the ordinary.
They worked with method; they said nothing on "methodology".
They solved the "crisis" of their time.
They did project and not "desing".
They were "cultured", creating; that's the
only way of being cultured.
They were peaceful teachers and looked
over "no teaching".
They used "New structures"? very new, in
their works and in their lives.
They did won batdes without casualties.
At last, how much literature! how few
works!
To create a language to discover nothing!
They imposed their methods, thoughts,
because to do what our betters say it's good is not
to be "alienated"; their realizations and their philosophy was repeatable, because every child must not
"realize" itself but through their betters guiding
them. There will always be guides!
Today, with the news that Mies stops teaching, like Wright, Gropius, Le Corbusier, we'll
have to think really that it's alright too that we go
on administering their heritage, because really we
~didn't either -in the architecture field- have taken
so much interest out of this enormous capital. (Are
they surpassed ... ?).
It was not proper of their time but it's now
worth those working seriously to deepen in the terrible diversification of small and petty efforts with
so great results in pettiness and smallness; with the
peace of the masters who carne and had, we must
think on all of it, knowing that we are honoured
orphans full of possibilities with their memory; as
before them, today we shall go on with our "crises".
September, 1969.
FOR A LOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

If we were not sure that the attempt will

fail, the cange people want to impose to Architecture would be worrying.
In order that a change may occur a wholc of
conditions concurring at the exact time is needed.
In Architecture those conditions have existed in the
20's and now there has nor been yet profound rea-

15
son s which could change what was achieved in the
change then started: we go on, so, wiht that change.
y ou cannot consider a chage a reversal in
the process. No human work chages by coming
back to former positions: that is called revision and
a revision aspires to pick something left on the way,
when the way was made too much lightly or frivolously. One should not confound the revisionist
position with the nostalgic one, as the outcome of
their application is very different.
It is morbid the sensation produced by
contemplation of the Architecture coming out of
this attempt for change. It is worse the morbib literature which accompanies it and wants to justify it.
These justifications include an inappropriate childishness. In them people talk of impersonality, repetition, loss of collective memory ... and architectu re should not be personal, it's an abstract exploit;
it sould repeat itself, as the problems it has to solve
are multiple and repeated. We are delighted to produce the new for serious reasons, losing rightly the
memory.
Architecture is intellectual or popular. AII
the other is business.
Intellectual architecture always repeated itself. Flat or curve frontons, complete or broken
can be found in all doors or windows of the world
and al so wind up buildings in alllatitudes and in all
times of our civilazation. For that nobody never
complained. Even today nobody talks about disgust for repetition in Architecture.
Without boasting it would be possible to
talk about methods to achieve today a logical Architecture.
Is's lost already the habit of making Architecture-Architecutre, that's the one which is based
on itself, an outcome of the culture created by itself, the one which always did imitate itself in order
to be able to go on with it, the one which never did
let it be known that Architecture can be made
without doing it. Which was the need in the whole
Western History to make the fronton, or even in
Greece? With a total unconcern for the used materials could and had to persist sorne never explained
and misunderstood shapes?
The procedure to make a logical Architecture is good: the problem is established in all its
range, all data are disposed in an exhaustive way
taking in account ali possible existing points of

view. Every possibility of solving the problem by

every possible way is studied. Every material possibility of building the solution in which these possibilities are already comprised. Once an outcome
is reached, if it is serious and if the several steps are
correct, the outcome is Architecture.
It is interesting to verify how the use of the
whole data is needed and how there is no outcome
if only one element is missing.
It was plain the success of rationalist Architecture in Spain during the 30's. Nevertheless there
was little more than effective architectonic simplifications. I would like to point out two exemples in
which, on account of introducing one more element, a very important one, the use of technique,
of technology, of an engineer, the outcome was a
product of change: the Zarzuela Hippodrome and
the Frontn Recoletos. In both a new technique
and a very competent technician were present. By
the side of Arniches y Dominguez and Zuazo, the
presence od Torrija was inevitable touch to the new
product, the new possibility. To make Architecture without technological change has the value it always had, al the best.
Words by Wright: "In Bear Run House,
the first house where 1 did get hald af case-hardened steel to build ... "
Not to notice the need of using a new technician and a new technique is to start poorly. If we
impersonalize and talk of a new material, with its
own strenght, we're again doing well.
If we don't feel by our side the sociological,
economical, technical, material chages; if they are
not studied one by one independently in order to
get results together, how can we tal k of changes in
Architecture or in anything else? Ah, the Bauhaus!
We could always doubt, historically, of all Architecture that existed. Who was Palladio?
I'm for the logical Architecture. If only 1
could say the same and so clearly in everything!
June, 1982.
Alejandro de la SOTA.

LE55 15 MORE.
HOW TO PROJECT
Page40
There is an innumerable quantity of materials and tools in different place and in different
states, sorne of which must pile on and agree so that
the building (because the matter is to construct a
building) may keep separate from the ground, entire and immobile and may be able to determine a
space qualitatively distict from what surrounds the
shell of the earth.
The project of that building is a work
which would seem impossible (for being so near
the divine activity) without the knowledge of sorne
laws (for instance and in order to point out one,
which fulfilment everybody or almost everybody
consider inevitable: the law of gravity) that in sorne
historical moments did reach many aspects of building or the project, so that in thoise cases the invention effort should have been minimal.
One can think, so, that the project st~rts
from the aknowledgement of sorne Iwas or standars
deduced from the agreement or understnding of
the world. The greater the understanding of reality
and the agreement with it, the lesser'the effort to
make apparent and verisimilar a building and conversely, the difficulties become greater according
as one considers these laws arguable, superfluous
or incomprehensible.
In sorne circumstances reality presents itself to you like something undecipherable, like a
copy carefully erased in which "there are many
things which seem to be there but there is nothing
but a word or a figure". If the awareness of that incomprehension becomes very sharp, it can covnert
the appearance itself into something hard to control, in such a way that to form every morning, after raising, a drawinh that may seem verisimilar is
considered a feat.
When the outside world in changed," so,
into a darkness without shadows or references, the
relation with the world has much to do with what
happens to the non domestic animals in the zoo:
the cages are for them, sure enough, something having no place in their conception fo the incomprehensible; they are, so, a coarse veil, a silent
withness of death.

From all of them, those which by biological determination are meant for action (i.e. the animals of the jungle) must react to such fatal circumstance not "keeping their mouths open" or with
self'absortion but with movement. The person devoted to architecture has the same inevitable deter-"
minism: before the world he shall react with movement: with building.
And what do most jungle animals in the
zoo? They repeat thousans of times the same movement around the cage, always with the wish to
make it exactely equal to the extreme that their
eyes, in the course done so many times, stpos unalterably in the same places. With this movement,
the more repeated the nearer to perfection, they
succeed to make aparent (in the insistent change of
the air) another reality, a miraculous chage of plan,
in which precisely the iniquitous presence of the
cage Stops having sense or importance.
Mies, mainly after his establishment in
America, and I ignore on account of which circumstances, 1 think es"tablishes a relation with the
world in terms similar to those of the jungle animals in the zoo their cages. After situating in relation to reality, that is, after having fixed his professional identity using tools deduced from it, he leaves progressively those bonds -his European formation- as if they were crutches in which he lost
confidence, or even worse, as if they were those
rods with which they beat the hind-foots of the
oxen, in the salughter-house, so that (alone, they
would never do it) they put their heads to receive
the final blow, and enters in relation with theworld
from abdication, from his tottering situation as a
lame, who for the first time tries moving without
crutches and meets the abyss in front (reality as a limitless darkness) and behind there is desolation
(his working tools in the f1oor, suddenly absurd
and abandoned).
From his fist gesture of immovable stupefaction, he knows that movement willlead him to
the abyss and nevertheless, being an architect, he is
condemned to action. And he starts, like the zoo
animals, to try a movement, first a faltering and
shaly one, which (and that is no foolishness at aH)
coul consist in raising the right arm, a bit contracted, from the level of the chair to the vertical aboye
the head, which initiated in the moment of raising,
even with the blankets over the legs and already reprating himself tirelessly, only detainde in the exact

16
moment the sleep arrived.
In these circunstances all orders should
amaZe him and, sitting at his drawing table, his
arm, aside the size, programme, situation, provenance of the order or of anything else, all the time
was raised and lowered, repeating tirelessly again
and again a fragment of building. Out of his movement, folded over hilself, continually perfectioned
and stripped out of references lien to his own dynamics, aprears "another" reality which, like the
very thin light beam of a laser does not illuminate
the darkness but does cross it, a visible witness that
it is possible to face existence from that condition as
an invencible victim and leh behind incandescent
fragments detached from that confrontation.
If one accepts the possibility of working in
the refered way, it is not necessary to explain whi
the result of that work hardly fits with the aims (otherwise always accidental or superfluous) which
gave way to the order of the building.
In the case of Mies, it is known that the
usuary of Farnsworth house refused'to occupy it as
he considered it un-livable and even denounced it
as fraudulento Nowadays it is already as a dwelling;
nevertheless, and that is something I have thougt
often about the buildings which seem to me extraordinary, I cannot but observe that in Mies'
house one had to move without walking, a bit above the floor as, I think, do the Lamas from Tibet
when they levitate. And that is an effort which cannot be demanded to any of us and, even more, extented to our daily life.
Only the photo of somebody can have a
place in that space: because the photographic
technique does nor consider (it makes it to disapear
or freezes it) in a person's aspect precisely that
which place s him more deeply in the strict condition of a real subject condemned to death: time.
And, from the photos, which one should
be better than the one of a little girl which has in itself the evidence of that no impregnation by reality,
the transparency of calm waters in which one can
aprreciate the limpid reflexes of time without menacing limits?
Solidarity with human condition apears,
and I don't think this is a personal statement, when
there are architects who, like Mies, confirm with
their work the trancendence or the universality of
the subjective and who are capable of building a
house in which people need to be replaced by the

photo of a little girl.

Jos LLIN S.

ASNAGO AND VENDER:

A NON TRANSIENT STYLE
Page42

1.- In the hand-books of history of Modern Archittecture there are not more than a brief
reference to their work and even the specialized
journals have not dealt with them, though Mario
Asnago's and Claudio Vender' s activities start the
beginnings of the 30's and goes on up to the middle
of the 60's. It looks as if they are meant to stay confined in a kind of half-anonymity, like so many
other very important professionals.
We allow ourselves, nevertheless, to put up
the suspiccion that the evaluation generaIly done is
totally inadequate and that Asnago's and Vender' s
work deserves, stil today, a very different atention.
Today one sees clearly that the thread of
the Italian rationalism between the wars is in fact a
complex meddling in which each individuality
acted independently, where individual positions,
although common in sorne main points, were in
fact very much varied. Asnago and Verner represented certaily the purist wing of the movement
and they were so in a way absolutely alien to any
intent to theorize, even with a certain exhibition of
professional estrangement. It is an attitude common to other Milanese architects of the time, but
which Asnago and Vender kept immutable even in
their works after the war.
2.- Mario Asnago (Saveso 1896-Como
1981) and Claudio Vender (Milan 1904) study together at Academia de Brera and get their degrees in
1928. They start then a very intense activity, dedicated almost exclusively to a private clientele recruited among the upper classes, which will remain
up to after half the 60's. Their first works are inspired in the twentieth century classicism aIread?,
strictly filtered (houses in 7 Via Euridipe, in 1933 ,
and Via Manin, in 1931-19341 The point of infle-

xion i~ the evolution of his taste is Vigan 2 (1933),

in which the still present noucentisme is changed
into purism through the extreme transparency of
the furniture and interior decoration.
As from this moment and up to the end of
the 50's, the way to sorne metaphisically meagre
shapes will be covered with sctrict sterness.
In 1936, at the VI Trienal\ Asnago and
Vender present a decoration of a sitting-room with
an extreme, uncommon lightness and the same year
they build the houses at Tunisia s street and 9 Euripide street6 , where they apply galleries and balconies commanding a horizontal arrangement of he
faade; among the advanced works of that time there is nothing similar. In 1937, the horizontal arrangement is adopted again at 1 Via Euridipe, but the
weight of the balconies lowers. The value of the faade plane is saved, in spite of the irregularity of the
whole, thanks to the curvature of the body of the
building.
At the two businesses of 1939 (Bar Moka
and confectioner's), their taste for decoration and
light and transparent furniture and for faint colours
over a uniforme background seeks stable and finished express ion.
.
At the Via Col Moschin house, on the contrary, they leave the research of new ways, as in
former works, in favor of a greater uniformity in
the faade, interpreted now as an isotropic planeo
In 1940 they project the tractors factory in
Cusano Milanino. In this case, the freedom to draw
faades independent of any functional demand
allows to create them in a form totally abstrcat.
Therefore, the work closing the most important
decennium of Asnago and Vender's work is, moreover, a summing up of their attitude in front of
the function the building will have: they have it always in mind but they never subject composition
and expression only to the practical demands. So,
their architecture, modern and at the same time
bourgeois, finds its dignity sphere of action not in
the implantation rethorics or in the recomforting
exhibition of lasting materials but exactly in overcaming the narrow-minded functionalism through
an abstract composition with a great simplicity and
lightness. And this true research work will be absolutely maintained even in the last years after the
war, over the fashions in constant change.
From 1950 and 1955, Asnago and Vender
make, among other works, buildings for offices

and dwellings in the center of Milan, in Velasca

Square, at Via Lanzone (to the Ferretubi) aild at Via
Albricci, and at Barlessina, a small villa with great
class.
These years repel completely all neorealist
re-elaboration or for ambient in favor of an edification with a faultless rigour, only enriched -in relation to the works of the 30's- by a prudent use of
high-quality materials, exactly the same the noucientisme architects always used abundantly.
At their work, so, the concept of "anibient" is rendered concrete'in the "built city" without picturesque or liricism: always in search for
the materialization of a rational (or metaphysical?)
urban order.
3.- In short: through the series of their Milanese buildings, Asnago and Vender developed,
between the 30's and the 50's, a whole research on
plane architecture. In architecture and its complements, they never emphasize the surface but the
plane; the plane has a thikness, perhaps reduced in
relation to the other two dimensions, but it is always presento
Asnago and Vender show clearly the faade
plane precisely through small dislocations to outside or inside, of balconies or the different kinds of
porticos and the same taste for allusions to depth
through the use of even and transparent filters, is
again found in the interiors. The backs of their
chairs in cross create a sistem of transparent planes
which eliven the space and give depth to it.
There is, therefore, a continyity between
interior and exterior i their houses, on account of
their use of planes and transparencies. The space,
crossed by planes giving it depth and lightness, is
balanced and measured and changes into the true
character of their architecture. Anyway, ies a character only hinted at, who never imposes. One cannot find a space building through a plane -as, for
instance, at the Dutch neopl,,~ticism-, but an allusion to its depth through the transparecies of planes
or smooth displacements of planes.
In this way, in Asnago and Vender the prevalent element is not the volume but the plane, the
internal space. The outside of the building, the entrance, the staicase openings and lift up to the dependencies are a kind of space uniformly characterized, through transparencies which give them
lightness and depth. Persico has defined the Vigan
establishment in Piazza Cordusio (1933) as "trans-

17
parent and coloured as an iridescent glass globe".
This relation between the external plane,
insinuating veiled depths, and the interior transparencies is maintained as one of the most interesting
effects of these authors' architecture, very difficult
to show through photography or drawing. Already in their first buildings, and specially at Via Manin house, in a still noucentisme atmosphere, Asnago and Vender work with slight movements at
the fa<;:ade and show tendency to treat it as an inflexion plane, even if it is only a matter of revolving
the angle in function of the form of the whole. One
must not forget that their architecture teacher, at
Bren, was Colonnese, who, together with Muzio
and ingeneer Barelli, did build, very near, "ca bruttan: both the metaphysical starting point and the
fa<;:ade curvature have a true antecedent in "ca bruttan.

But it is the houses at 9 Via Euripide and 50

Tunisia, both in 1936, where Asnago and Vender
start with all energy their research on plane architecture. Their liberation from the rules of the noucentisme lenguage, their discovering of rationalism
and abstract painting exert probably a catalizing effect and help them to focus the themes which interest them. In these works, the fa<;:ade plane, too
much vertical, is created again through the use of
lining plates at the balconies of the higher floors. A
litde piled up in tunisia Street, the balconies are
soved in an exemplary way in Via Euripide by
means of voiding the galleries at the higher and
lower floors, which reduce the height to the plane
of the fa<;:ade and proportions it in the whole. The
lower part of the fa<;:ade is shared with regularity by
the small balconies of the series of openings, which
break its rigidity while the enlargement of the space
between the pilasters of the two central arches,
. with the correspondent narrowing of the lateral arches, gives a fa<;:ade rhythm more relaxed, tending
to horizontality.
The fa<;:ade plane of the houses in Euripide
ans Tunisia streets is cut by lining plans, by horizontal juttings tending to reconstruct the proportion. At 1 Via Euridice, in 1938, Asnago and Vender develop the same tension in different directions, respectively to the plane and the horizontal
complements: the weight of the balconies deviates
down while the fa<;:ade plan liberates upwards. The
decision of bringing the galleries to the upper part
could be perhaps an homage to Gi Ponti, who had

acused them of heaviness in presenting in "Domus"

both buildings of 1936, the decision of bringing the
terraces upwards.
In this way the building re-assumes sorne
of the traditonal elements of the Milanese contruction, as, for instance, the continuous balcony.
Even in the use of big windows both architects are
very careful in accentuating and strengthen the
compositive decisions: Venetian blinds in the
lower floors, with a dense chiariscuro; sliding
doora in the upper floors, where the result of the
plane must be still more evident.
At the Via Col Moschin house, the operation changes its sing. The tendency is towards the
isotropic plan, spread in a homogenous way following the rhythm of the balconies. No intent at all
of compensating proportions: the fa<;:ade plane is
not corected but is exhibited as it is, with the only
commentary of the small balconies opening to its
surface. It is, in a way, a work of transition, in the
way to the bright result, finished, of the Zanoletti
building at 8 Via Albricci. Here the plane keeps its
unity and does not show more incidences than the
ones brought by the different lining materials, by
the different designs and dimentions, by the different big windows, by the small entrance of the windows in the last floor, more than imposing a horizontal dimensiono
The itinerary is closed with the house at 4
Via Velasca. The building should face a narrow
street. The position in perspective drawing is the
only appropriate and the successive demolitions
made in the square change today its meaning.
The plan is isotropic, the disposition appearing as imposed is very slight, the openings of
the upper floors scarcely drawn. Perhaps the perfect balance of the fac;:ade of the Via Albricci house
is already diluting in an excess of abstraction tending to confound plane and surface.
4.- On building technology, the position
of Asnago ando Vender is always professional and
anti-literary. In their world there is no opposition
at all to the techniques the current taste imposes, or
to economy or functionality demands. Asnago and
Vender feel as participats of their time and they do
not oppose it with elitiste or non-conformist positions. Their architecture, on the contrary, takes to
extremes sorne possibilities which are implied in
the usual contruction and developes through them.
Luminosity, lightness, the use of large stained-

glass windows and very thin window frames, all

that is part of the research for an agreable habitableness, comfort, that in our century is already a thing
of general character and a component of how a
dwelling must be. Asnago and Vender's answer
sticks to this tendency and changes it through rigour and the decision in choosing alterna ti ves, applying them to what is common expectation, but i a
so radical way and lacking commitments that
change in poetry the intrinsic vulgarity of these expectations, their short-sightedness, reducing the
idea of city to the dimentions of the simple bourgeois flato
Not to break with the aspirations of the
common citizen but to support and ennoble them:
this is the conciliating actitude making the noucentisme architects to choose, on one hand, the way of
literature and history and, on the other, the use of
solid and comfortable materials. In this way, the
bourgeois impiration to comfort was sublimated
by the noucentisme in an exhibition of richness and
overcoming of their own pasto In the Milanese
bourgeoisie of the 30's, which chose fascism, the
concepts of economic wealth and cultural wealth
are dramatically split, but the noucentisme architects celebrate their integration as if it was certain
and this short circuit is well received.
But what atracted clients was not their adherence to history but the concept of comfort. And
the proof is in the fact that not only Asnago and
Vender' s position but aldo the position of other architects in un-historical or anti-historical positions, like Terraghi, but offering the same wahy
this comodity, did get great success and became
models very much so, that after the war, the noucentisme architects, being already impossible to resort to the historical recolletion, will give life, together with the rationalists, to a hybrid style, almost wanting historicist rhetoric but equally tranquillizing, characteristic in the Milanese architecture of the 50's.
No less available to the bourgeoisie, Asnago and Vender propose, themselves, an hypothesis
of dignification of the bourgeois idea of home, without resorting to history but through a sublimation
of the building techniques, in the purification of
what is abstracto
Rationalism, besides embracing with enthusiasm the new techniques and new materials, had
proposed a concept of city which was materialized

in the rupture of the block of houses and in the opening of free areas, that is, in an open distribution.
That proposal was rejected by the noucentisme
who insist in the application of the alternative of
building a city by closed compartments. Also in
this question the actitude of Asnago and Vender is a
mediating one and is basically directed to avoid all
ruptures with the most commonly accepted habits.
If one compares their buildings in Via Albricci with
one by Luigi Moretti in Corso Italia, very near there, where the block form is rejected violendy and
the building is canged into a plastic element of rupture with the urban landscape and with their rules,
one will have a clear idea of the attitude difference
between the Roman and the two Milanese. Asnago
and Vender do not reject the rule imposed by habit
but save it from within. The rule demands aplane
fac;:ade. It shall be plane, O.K., but in a way that
this characteristic is made dominant and might be
recognized. To choose this course means lO choose
to dignify what is vulgar, what is "deja vu", what is
usual, by means of a profound reflection on the elements themselves composing them. The difference
between quality and routine gets subtle, inperceptibie: one trusts in details, in execution, in clarity of
arrangement.
The question is different in the builidingd
out of town. To Asnago and Vender, the image of
periphery coincides with the image of open distribution; the farm house with the city one.
The distribution of Corsica Street or the
small houses of Chiesa Valmalenco and Barlassina
exemplify again their thought and their ways. One
and the others are what people usually expect and,
at the same time, they are, in their excessive, rigid,
abstract physical moulding, a kind of crystallization of the expected idea. The answer to the common expectation and the purely architectonic expression do co-incide, through an hallucinated adherence to the initial supposition.
5.- As it could be seen, both thanks to the
reading of their more significant buildings and
through the analysis of Asnago and Vender' s actitude regarding technique, the fact of their being
classifyed as rationalist architects and placed within
the generalline of reshuffling the language and contents of architecture was, certainly, legitimate, but
anyway not enrrough. Even because, togetherwith
the extraordinary quality of their language, in their
coherence and cleanliness, in Asnago and Vender

18
remain only slight traces of that social and equalitarian strain which animated Pagano.
One gets a closer approximation if one
compares their woik with Albini's and Figini's and
Pollini's -all of them architects dedicated, although
in different ways, to the research of the most quarrelsome part of the rationalist language: the search
for lightness, the use of new materials behind the
transparecy effect, the definition of space through
the building of transparent planes.
Not even in this way, though, one arrives
to individualize in a sactisfactory manner the character of their architecture, and the question is entangled when one observes that it lacks, almost entirely, the functionalist trait, which formed a so important part of the ideologic luggage of rationalism: in Asnago and Vender, the volumes and the
fa"ades have an autnomous design, the balconies
are not where they would be useful but where the
architects think they are becoming, with a composition vision of the fa"ade more near to the desing
methods of the XXth century Milanese house than
to the functionalist rules. Summing up, one could
arrive to the paradoxical conclusion (not without
sorne reason, though) that they used so well the rationalist language precisely because they were not
racionalists and did not feellinked to those pathetically confusing rules (form follows function, beauty lies only in what is useful, and so on) which reduced rationalism to a mechanical aridity.
Once established which were not Asnago'
and Vender' s points of reference, we must see
which were their true models, the references allowing them to compaginate their architecture wiht
as much freedom and adherence to the culture of
their time. They are helped by the witnesses on his
projecting way. Vender himself tells that the originary idea was drawn with coloured chalk on great
sheats of a paper which allowed to erase simply
with a cloth and to make corrections easily, as if it
was a black-board. They were always two-dimensional compositions. From the destruction of their
archive sorne of those drawings were saved, sorne
of them made for the re-construction, in 1955, of
Vigan establishment, at the Milanese Cordusio
Square. The shocking character in them is their
character extremely synthetic, pictoric. The fact
that these sketch es produced drawings extremely
schematic and technical only shows their adequation capacity to a necessary comunication langua-

ge, also filtered through an extreme rigour.

Having studied at Brera, they dedicated,
certainly, a constant and profound atention to the
evolution of Italian painting. Friends of Soldati
and Ghiringhelli, they participated in the activities
of the abstractionists from Milan around the gallery 11 Milione. Veronese, Licini, Soldati, Reggiani,
Fontana, were perhaps, together with Rho and Radice, from the Como group, their nearer references, as well as "Casabella" magazine, in Pagano,
and their friendship with Ponti.
To them, though, painting was not only a
reference point. As Luigi Zuccoli tells, Asnago
usually passed Saturdays and Sundays at lake
Como painting, and made several individual exhibitions at Il Milione galeria. The last one has been
in 1959. Also Claudio Vender tried to paint, not
arriving though to Asnago's results. These results
were, by the way, remarkable, plainly, as even his
more recent works, from 1975 to 1980, when Asnago had retired already from the architectural
profession, have a veritable cathegory, with a lightness and a sense of colour worth his best architecture.
Is short, we could say it is most probable
that Asnago and Vender, when composing their fa"ades and the design of their interiors, took in account more abstract art than rationalism. They
projected like painters. That not only explains their
freedom regarding dogmas and slogans of the rationalist culture but also their big isolation and their
later and hasty retirement. Their architecture does
not accept ideological contrasts between progressist functionalism and non-compromised traditionalism because, even being litde functionalist and
litde compromised, it is, certainly, something less
slave of tradition.
To them, architecture is architecture and
that's it, with a total and absolute autonomy of all
ideologic contact. It's reduced, so, to pure beauty,
hardly used by any historical thesis dedicated to
show preconceived judgements, and difficult to
imitate by architects without c1ear ideas. But not
even in arriving at this point we have arrived to a totally satisfactory explanation. Their mentality as
abstract painters makes c1ear many aspects of their
way of acting, places them in a satisfactory way in
relation to the myths of the architecture of their
time, but, notwithstanding, their prettier interiors
are impregnated of an animism, of a naturalism, of

such understanding of the event and its absense,

history frezed and suspended, and are, at the same
time, so light, fihered, disposed with so tenuous
and uniform colours, that they make to think at the
same time in metaphysics and purismo Movements,
at least, well contrated among themselves.
And, in fact, the artistic panorama of the
30's presents itself separated in two great slopes.
On one side, the presence, bodily and etheric at the same time, of noucentisme painting which
bent to tendencies alien to metaphisics. It was a
front, though not totally defined, that under the
vague expression of realism gathers very different
experiences, but aboye all them planes the shadow
of painting-literature, from Da Chirico and Carra
to Arturo Nathan, Gigiotti, Zanini and Usellini.
Literary painting and, so, historical, account and
suspention of the account, concrete presence and .
indefinite wait.
On the other hand, the bursting in of the
modern avantgardes, refusing literature and history, the c1ear delimitation of geometrical planes by
the abstractionist group from Milan and Como (Licini, Reggiani, Veronesi, Radice, Rho; Fontana,
Soldati) and also, the scuptors (Melotti).
The opposition between both currents is a
well known fact, and in this opposition did meet, as
always happens, personal aversions and likings, in
no lesser degree than the objective differences of
posmon.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted forcibly
sorne aspects less rigids of separation, sorne circulation of tastes from one front to another, if we wish
to arrive to a classification of positions in a way
nearer the historical data. And among these connexions one must include the position of the Milanese
architects, so much in relation to painting and with
the most advanced currents of arto
Certainly, it is well visible the unsatisfactory schematism of the identification between rationalism and abstraction. To the compact pilot of the
abstractionists before quoted would have to correspond another pilot, equally compact, of rationalist architects. In our case, and restricting ourselves to the Milanese, we should have to talk less on
Figini and Pollini, Asnago and Vender, that is, the
architects nearer that etherification of the shapes
and that sickly colourist rigour which contributed
to the Purismo
Pero the c1assification will not do, it is too

much schematic. It's true that in the 30's these architects made buildings -and chiefly interiorswho resuhed similar among themselves by the use
of sorne materials -iron and glass- and pure and unchanging colours, and on account of a common
tendency to dematerialization and on account of a
common tendency to dematerialization and transparency, but the spirit which animated each of
them was extremely varied.
About Albini, many people have talked of
"magic realism", of "surrealist vein". In fact, there
is a kind of animism running through the more expressive of his works, forcing us to think, inevitably, in Picasso's bull made up with the saddle and
the wheel of a bycicle. Modern materials, poor and
light, bu with an image result going beyond the materials themselves. One has only to think in the radio of 1938 or the library of 1940.
In short, we could say that Albini situates
inside the area extending from surrealism to metaphysics because otherwise it is impossible to comment the frozen space, as in suspense, of the Treasure Museum in Genova, or the sinister presence of
the two old fluvial coats in the glass coffins (and the
same way, and doubdess, one must qualify the
Scarpa museums as metaphysical).
~
It is not the first time that while we study
the work of an architect we find points of contact
with artistic movements disagreeing among themselves, though the antonomy between surrealism
and abstraction (one stares at a moment's history,
the other sublimates it in the un-temporality of me
pure idea) is easier to define than it looks at first
sight and through a schematic definition.
More concisely contructivist and, so, less
restless, is the position of Figini and Pollini, perhaps the more abstract in a strict sense: the quiet
spaces that the photos allow us to see at Graja bar
and at the studio-villa of V Trienal are graceful and
relaxed. There even is a certain idea of comfort, rather absent in the first Albini.
But let's return to Asnago and Vender.
With them the circuit between purism and methaphysics is quickly closed: their frozel} chairs, their
delimited spaces, the use itself of the planes by successive recesses, are nothing less than the introduction of the awaited event (that is, history) at the
non-transient world of the abstract.
Their abstraction is not objective. They
work by substraction, stripping off the former

19
ones and like this the spaces are gradually occupied
by skeletons of tools, by transparent shadows. In a
so litde dense space, the presence of a chair with a
crossed in diagonal back is changed into a strong
iconic presence, evoking an absent marikind.
In the same way that the famous painted
chairs by Da Chirico, Asnago's and Vender's
chairs, through their existance and through the
existance of an immaterialized and abstract space,
do assume an enormous power of evocation and
nostalgia.
The objectivity of the abstract disposition
is emphasized in a decisive way by the metaphysical prest:llce of these objects. That afterwards the
abstraction and the metaphysics could be the successive poles opposed in the history of ltalian painting of our century is not up to them.
lt is perhaps this freedom regarding the different currents, their dependence regarding the hatred among the several groups of painters, what
allowed Asnago and Vender to synthsize the influxes of so different tendencies.
But their synthesis of these influxes is not a
synthesis in their resulto Only Morandi will arrive
there, in painting. Only he succeeds to recast, in his
farrious botdes, the past time, the waiting and the
rejection of time. Piacentini, precisely, said to him
(1 quote Aymonino): "Mora ... you always make
botdes. " In his unvarying actitud e, he not only refused to measure with the others, but measured history and things in a different way.
Morandi's sythesis stays perhaps in Asnago and Vender in the from of a juxtaposition: they
graft metaphysics in the abstraction and both components do not fuse but each one keeps visible. But
doubdessly in coparison with the non-temporary
and un-historical objectivity of a Veronesi, their
language sounds in a very differnt way.
More exacdy: Asnago and Vender use abstraction materials to make metaphysics. And out of
that appears a new metaphysics, camouflaged, but
what, essecialy, is metaphysics and, in the des guise
of language, is abstraction.
In the 30's Persico has already had a brilIiant intuition although he had not defined it with
exactitud: "lt looks as if in ltaly today architecture,
at least concerning sorne avant-garde artist, yearns
to integrate the vis ion of metaphysical painting:
this current is meant, probably, to form the most
original base of "ltalian" architecture in Europa

("Casabella", June 1935).

This is the way that, perhaps unconsciousIy, was covered by Asnago and Vender in the 30's
and the 50's.
Perhaps now there is something which is
clearer. That they are architects enough not to be
inserted among the divisions of the painting currents; painters enough not to suffer the influence
of the common places of the functionalist culture
and so, therefore, being not painters nor architects,
working in a kind of "no man's land" between both
cultures, ignoring both of them, Asnago and Vender left us sorne of the most beautiful architecture
works of Modern Milan.
Renato AIROLDI

about him. He led us to different places to see

things, with that so kind unpretentiousness he had,
and asked his pupils if that builidng was by Pere
Blai, and he was the big authority on the subject. 1
loved Rafols.

There is a revival now. There is like a kind

of meeting again vernacular architecture ("Quaderns" no. 145,7 buildings).
That is a bit rash. Look, we, when we did
start here, we introduced a thing which was then
revolucionary: the flat roof. lt could be done technically. Not at the Northern countries but here it
was done for many centuries. So, very well, you
can put again the sloping roofs. In my opinion, one
of the things which could be well profited in these
climates is to enjoy the roof, but if one wants to sacrifice oneself ... there is no obstacle. Unhappily in
Boston 1 cannot do them.

In Eivissa the flat roofs are done with a

chamber?

THE LUCID VANGUARD

A conversation with Josep Llus Sert

Page 74
I t seemed us well-timed to profit a brief stay
in Barcelona of architect Josep Llus Sert, on his trip
from Boston to Paris, in order to pluck his present
opinions, as it will be perhaps useful toenrich the
immutable image of him fixed for 50 years. The talk
that "Quaderns" had with him in a hotel of our city
did have this goal.
Sert. (turning over the pages of "Quaderns") I've seen Coderch last Summer when went
to Espola's old manor house. 1 did find him quite
well. Always the same Coderch. HeOs very peculiar mano He's very much interested in the quality
of things, a great appreciation. 1 respect him very
mucho In many things, specially in politics, we
don't agree. We know each other from many years
ago ... This one is very good. This is Rafols. He's an
interesting mano 1 remember that once he made us
to run through Pere Blas work and it is interesting
becasue Pere Blai does represent Renaissance here,
in Catalonia.
Quaderns. It was Rajols, practically, who

discivered Pere Blai, wasn't it?

Yes, he did a series of exhaustive studies

The oldest houses were made with savine

logs. They did put all they could to stand and then
they put "talgues" -that dried alga- to isolate and
made l.ike a kind of mattress. After that, they did
put earth, an argillaceous earth, because the peasants did not know -and why should they?- how to
make the estimates to make a roof and did put so
much earth that in the end ... But as an isolator it
was very good. lt does not rain much there and
when it does they put a pail till the water stops,
they put a patch and that is cheaper than to make a
roof.

This is an article by Manuel de Sola-Morales i Rosell on bricks and history ... ("Quaderns",
no. 146)
That is the typical Catalana vault. When he
was young, Le Corbu admired that very much and
when he made one of his last works in Paris, those
private small houses, he called a Catalana who lived
in France to explain him the Catalan vault.

We see in your work, also in the Modern

M ovement but specially in your work, the influence
of the vernacular architecture.
Yes, it was a thing impressed us very much
the first time we went to Eivissa in 1932. it was a
discovery in the sense that we've seen many of
those things done in the center and north of Europe, we had them here, we had no need to go for
them elsewhere. For instance, the flat roofs and the
primary enough volumes without decoration did

exist already. They were a privilege of poverty.

Puig i Cadafalch had to bring them from Nuremberg: the inspiration to Ametller house and the gothic bridge in Bisbe Street are coming from the German gothic. We defended the Catalana gothic, Santa Maria del Mar and Pedralbes, and we had discussions with the teachers, who said that the Catalana
churches and monuments did not finish the roof as
in the N orth because they had no more money, and
that was not so. Santa Maria is perfect, those drains
and that roof ... !
In the evaluation of the building aspects, in
your work is very important that things really can
stand, can runo 1 think that now one can see that
many of your things remain, just the reverse as
with other followers of the modern movement.
I've lived an epoch, I'1I be always thankful,
in which there was a thing called Working School,
where you learned your trade. Now we find that
there are architects who mass produce .things.
There was a mason's trade. lt was those people who
did closed vaults. They worked like angels and they
had good hands. During the war that has disappeared almost completely.

That's a work by Mitjans ("Quaderns" no.

145)
By Mitjans what does please me is that
system of building the galleries again. Because
what should have been done would be to turn "the
block" round and let those gallies to the street, instead of making those things in artificial stone which
,make life so hard. The gallery is a great thing, craeting unity. As much things there are similar the better.
The "discordant block" was Barcelona,
which was more carefully linked than now. Now
all blocks are much more discordant than that.

Yes, above all, they are ugly, because the

other one, even if discordant ...
No, it was not as much discordant.

This is Duran i Reynalds.

This one, yes, was a great guy.

You 've been friends, haven 't you?

yes, 1 knew him well, and also his brother.
In 1935 he did build classical houses and

also the one in Corsega Sto

Yes, and it was very good.

Should we start? Well, we've started already. Turning over the pages of our journal has already suggested many themes.

20
So, do start because, soon, I've the habit of
taking a nap after lunch.
Before, you said you were not afraid of the
classical.
Not only I'm not afraid of it, but in my
time I admired certain things. I remember that with
Josep Torres and YlIescas we've made a trip in Italy
asking for works by Palladio. Works which were
difficult to find, with a straw 10ft in the portico,
abandoned. And it was not precisely a moment of
Palladian reviva!. I had Escamozi's books -Ieather
plates I found at Encants- in my library. Afterward
I've been robed of all I had there because there were
many books of another kind and they looked subversive or what not and they disappeared. After
I've found good editions abaout Palladio; I've
come to Barcelona a few years after the war and I
found a firstedition of five books published by Palla. At the New York Metropolinta Museum, in a
display-window, I've seen the same book and I
saig: "you stupid, you left it there". I did send a cable to Prats and I said to him: "buy me one if it is
still there". It was.
N o, I've always had a great interest for this
evolution. But it looks to me that there are sorne
inapplicable things, thaf must be used with a certain conscience. I don't beleive you could cut out a
window with a fronton and a sketch by Michael
Angelo and fix it as you could fix a stamp in a leuer.
Then there is an actual problem linked with proportions. You jave to think that most of these detalis were in chambers with a high ceiling, which had
less windows and in proponion they should not be
so close beca use everything was one big room. If
you put now a thing like that in a flat or a room
with an eight feen elevation and ten width, it does
not fit, because the order is totally different. What
is important is rhythm, proportion. It is not functionalism, but to make a thing with a harmonious
whole. Even if one looks at it only from an aesthetic point of view, one seese all porportions changing. Andthen, the cost of building, one must go
to the cheap version of what was done before. And
when one has seen the good and has loved the
good, with correct propositions ... well it cannont
pIe ase me because I don't think it is a livingversion.
This is a great advantage of yours, as you
know the classical even if you did not make it. On
the contrary, those who have been educated with
the modern movement...

Execuse me for what 10m going to say, but

at the Harvard college, when Gropius had come,
they took out from the classroom all plaster reproductions of classical sculptures. they had cleaned
everything. I've arrives in a moment when I was the
first in favour of re-establishing the courses in history. I did bring in Gideon from Switzerland 10
make sorne courses in history, not as they were
made before but with new concepts of space evolution and the evolution of the building elements up
to modern times: how all factors that had changed
demanded an expression of that time. From this
point of view I see what has been done lately. I have
had in my studio Jenks, who is the father of postmodernismo He's a nice guy, but frankly ... This
name is a bit stupid as it's not really pot-modernism
but pre-modernis "pre-modern". The word "modern" for a start is very dificult to difine. I prefer to
use the expression contemporary architecture, the
one which is from its time, the one from the changing momento In the first GATCPAC magazines
we already criticized the simply glued columns, because they forced us to make walls unnecessarily
great. I thingthat one of the things wedidn'tfind as
yet, in spite of the efforts of much talented people,
is the envelopment of the buildings. In the structure there is no problem at all ... One can make fantasies, but the envelopment -now that you are worried with the fa"ades- was not found.
Before you did say also that these neo-classical fafades of Barcelona are very good.
Yes, at that time there was not great interest in being different from your neighbour: if the
balcony did stick out 80 cms, the neighbour's balcony would do the same. I don't know if there was
a Council regulation about it. And the wrought
iron made different drawings but was harmonious.
There was a line of cornices more or les s equa!. Urbanistically, this wish that each house and each architect express themselves differently, in my opinion is a disaster. That second part of la Castellana,
in Madrid, which is a show-case of structures violating the sense of gravity! One is over one foot, the
other on two, etc. That is the worst that can be
done.
But that is a consequ.ence, in part, of some
principIes of the Modern Movement.
The principIes of Cerda's Plan were much
beuer. Now I am not any more interested that all
windows should be in glass. Even if it is all glass,

sometimes there is no sight. then, if the room is in

disorder, when the lights are on, it's nothing worth
seeing but worth looking aside! There is no way of
solving it. Then the way we did find was to use the
translucent elements. the window has three functions, sight, ventilation and lighting. It's possible
10 give lighting without sight and it's possible to
give ventilation without lighting nor sight. And
we've got already three elements 10 play with the
fa"ade. I think there are vocabularies which could
be enriched. Le corbu wentone dayto S.O.M. studio and they showed him miles and miles of "pilotis" and horizontal windows, and he told them:
"Look, it's O.K. if you are one hundred per cent
modern, but one hundred and twehty five is a bit
too much!"
The question is that here, with the post-m 0dernism phenomenon there are people defending
the SOM quite a lot. Forwhat we know, it looks to
us, first, that they are already certainly al! dead for
years and ...
There is the name, because what happens
there is like Coca-Cola. When the name has got a
prestige, is registered and nobody else can use it. It
has been much repeated. Then, they have disperse
things and lots of people. The're are 14 at the head,
architects. But in the group they have in Chicago
there are more than one thousand architects working. It already escaped the normal dimensions, it
has nothing to do with it.
From here often we stil! see it as the part of
architecture mpre faithful to the modern movemento
The S.O.M. is a machine. It's like a trade
mark and they still sell it. You know as the market
is. While a product sells ... it goes on being producedo
1 think that in architecture we are at a very
difficult transition momento For me architecture is
much linked to town-planning. In a site there is a limited number of things which can be done, but the
problem really to be solved is a town-planning problem, a problem with the street system, circulations, distributions. If there is not a change, there
will be only sorne different mushrooms in a place
or other. 1 would like that the more ancient parts
could stay as they are, respecting them, and that all
that is old with quality should be adapted wherever
possible, but without destroying the ambiento
Now they say: that is very good, but they leave

everything demolished.
We are educated within the principIes ofthe
Modern Movement and would like to ask you -as
you have known al! important masters of this movement -if they were people well acquainted with
classical arch itectur.
They were people born in a time when classical architecture was very well known. They did
not hide it. And Mies too. They were very much
influenced by popular things and they did not hide
it either. A similar thing did happen to uso I think,
not wanting to question anybody, that as the histo.
rical studies were eliminated and a new generation
did apear -and it is not precisely yours- which is
reacting against that, which are completely unlearned in architecture. they dfo things of ignorant
people, taken out of building catalogues without a
feeling or an idea of what they are doing. I hope
that the fact of studying his10ry again will help. I
do agree. What I dont't agree with is to apply
things which are not appliable. They must reconcile themselves to it.
y ou have workd one ot two years at Le
Corbusier's studio. How was it?
It was a very winsome studio. thcy didn't
pay anytbody. For us it was a school. Everythi:1.g 1
know I've learned there. We had discussions with
him on how we did things and why and al! that. He
was very open in this sense. We became very good
friends. We've kept this good friendship all life.
They were not unlearned at al!. ad they knew what
they condemned.
A last question: how do hoy evaluate your
work?
Well, sorne works do please me, others not
so much, but, you know, one has seen them grow!
The house in Muntaner St., for instance, 1 remember the efforts we've done with the wall so thing to
put thos rolled up venetian blinds. AII that was a
very pacient work. that at the roof one thing sould
not see, that the lift towers did not apear. Then I've
done sorne very plane things. It's like women's
dresses. In a moment the fashion was the curves
and the reliefs, and after, all plane. I amb not in favour of the flat roof or the sloping roof, bu~ I prefer
the mixed roof, with sorne accessible places, possibly made into a garden. Gaud has done that at Mila
house and Gell house! I find it more interesting
than the traditional roofing or the 10tally flat roof.
In life one changes and sees things. architecture is

21
done by a series of equivoques and when you have
the building finished then you see where you failed. The next one will be a bit better. you have to
enjoyas much as possible, because as it's a trade
which doesn't pay much, well, at least let's enjoy it.
it must be taken seriously and with enthusiasm. Sometimes it's taken too mauch seriously. these so
big anides people write on architecture I don't
have the time or the endurance to read them. Add
to this, that I don't understand haH the words.
Certainly yau fallaw American architecture. What do yau think abaut it?
Ido not know enough of it. Look, I don't
think architecture goes according to countries. It
goes according to the sun, the 24 hours cyde, the
predominant winds, what does grow, etc. American architecture from the Nonh has much more in
common whith Canada than with the Caribbean,
and the architecture of Florida has much in common with the Cubano
Nevertheless the Five do the same kind af
building in the Canada barder and any ather place.
And the S.O.M. the same.
I'm sorry for them. I do respect Meir's
work. It think he's a good architecte: I've seen a
work he's done lately, the less restless, which was
very well. But I also think he complicates everything a bit too mucho Le Corbusier was one day
with his "cubiculum modulorum", the one 2,26 x
2,26 x 2,26, looking at a project -he looked at it
from top to bottom- and said finally "modern architecture is not as much complicated as that"!

OF THE SHAPE ON
ARCHITECTURE IN THE
MODERN MOVEMENT
Page84
1.- Mechanizatian and the end af mimesis

"With the enarmaus develapment af the technique and the metrapolis aur perception organs
have increased their capacity ta develap optical and

acoustic functions simultaneously ... the Berlin peapIe crass Pastdamer Platz; they talk while they listen to the claxon afthe can, the bell af the tranways,
the acoustic signs of the bus, the grunts af the carriages, the noise af the underground, the shauts af the
tranways, the acaustic signs of the bus, the grunts af
the carriages, the naise af the undergraund, the
shouts of the newspaper sellen, the saunds caming
fram loudspeakers, etc., and they can separate all
these acoustic stimuli. On the cantrary a paar inhabitant af the provinces, caming to the same square is
so much confounded in front of so many impressions, that he stops like a block of stone in front of a
tramway in movement. "
Lazlo Moholly Nagy. Malerei-Photographie-film. Bauhausbucher n. 08, 1927, pp. 43.
The quotation on the top of this article presents the co-ordinates in which the experience of
modernity must be inscribed: technique and the
metropolis as new premises. To base on these new
foundations the architecture of today seems to be
the aim of the theoretical formulations which since
the end of the first World War to the crisis of 29 are
attempted, from different instances, in Europe.
Anyway, to the avant-garde positions this
foundation seems to derive from a direct shock,
also problematic, with the lived reality of the tecncial and metropolitan universe as situations in
which the conditions of social life and individual
sensibility have new and different characteristics
concerning the pasto
Sigfried Giedion dedicated one of his most
intelligent studies to the inciden ce of mechanization in modern sensibility. It is an anthropological
study; what he called anonimous history, that is
the study of the productive conditions, but also the
perception of the environement, affecting from the
rootos the order and the characteristics of the situation of the people living in them. Mechanization is
to this author a first indication, a new characteristic
marking in such a way the conditions of life and
change and only taking it into account is possible to
understand, for instance, the characteristics of architecture in modern times.
It is not difficult to add that the conditions
the mechanization in modern world presents are
intimately linked to the technological innovation at
the disposal of this world and, so, to the images and
experiences developed by this technological world.

Viollet-Ie-Duc, in his Entretiens, already

said that the architecture of the future should look
more like a railway locomotive than like any historial model of past architecture, meaning with it that
architecture would be in future more conditioned
by the new technology and by the new artificial environement produced by it than by any reference to
building or Stylistic solutions peculiar to past architecture.
Two criteria were so established which are
becoming clear along the texts, manifests and reflections by the theorizers of decimononic architecture.
First of all the demand for a Zeitgeist, the
spirit of the time capable of manifesting itself in the
images and in a new "style", adequate to the new
conditions of the technological environment. This
demand is lived as a need and so it changes into a direct search for the figurative motives peculiar to the
technique as a first approximation which will allow
to overcome the style imitations from the pasto
But also in second place there will be the
wish to express what is peculiar to the present time
as a moral act of sincerity and authenticity -the
Ruskinean lamp of truth- which will have us to establish the exemplary character of the technique.
The reference to nature which was the ultimate justifier in the architectonic aestetics theory of the past
disappears since the identification of a new universe to which it is possible to send artistic creation
and the legitimation of its products. The artificial
world of techique appears as a guarantee and as
anti-nature, as replacement of the perfect rational
order of the classical cosmos which is displaced to
the produced rationality, changing and human, of
the technical artifice.
But the mechanization phenomenon detected by Giedion is not only a technological phenomenon, as it is in the root of the processes of social
division of work which allow to re-organize the
pro~uctive universe acording to a strategy of consummg.
The re-organization of production worked
out by mechanization affects equally the behaviour
of producer and consumer. The natural processes
are split in molecules which make any experiment a
simple summary of stimulae and answers in chain.
Primacy of behaviour psychology in the culture of
the end of the XIX century and the later metropolitan sociology have in reality a clear common bond.

To the empirical psychology behaviour is reducible

to unities of stimuli and answers which allow a precise identification of the functioning of an organism before a frame of established conditions. The
decomposition of any behaviour in this program of
simple unities is the first condition to establish the
malleability of social, economical and aesthetical
behaviour of the individual and so to be able to thik
in re-organitzing these data and the resulting behaviour chains in a way similar to the way how the
working unities are organized in an assembly line.
The metropolitan experiment carried out
by the simmelian sociology sets out fmm the atomization of nervous behaviour as the first element establishing the possibility of an universe organized
by an indismminate juxtaposition of stimuli,
forming changing nets of solicitations.
The rationality that mechanization establishes is the one originated with the reorganization
of the metropolitan behaviour in the assembly line
and in the show that the consuming masses give of
themselves as a new stimulation frame. Also in this
way the ancient naturalness must give way to the
anti-natural world ofthe artifice presented as a new
nature, not already necessary, but free, subject to
manipulation and change.
Modem architecture must, therefore, set
oug from the formulations of modemity, from the
experience of losing the natural guarantees as a first
element and with the characteristics of the technical
and metropolitan universe as the new perception
conditions and experience of reality.
To this situation the first answers of a certain radicalism fmm the point of view of sensibility
seem to be on the one hand the cubist ones and on
the other the futurist ones.
Cubism means a break with a central, statical and permanent, essencialized point of view, in
favor ofanother one, multiple, juxtaposed and fragmentary. Certainly the explanation of reality that
Cubism offers is in one way or another an explanation subjected to perceptive change. From the perspective stability it goes to the accumulation of a
world of experiences which does not refers to the essencial but can only offer of reality a conjunctural
venion. But Cubism, on the other hand, from the
point of view of the experiences which concemed it,
was enormously conventional ans reactionary to the
representation of the technical universe characteristic of the new metropolis. Of course, , through con-

22
ventional interior and stilllife themes, Cubism explored the new molecular structure of perception.
But is is equally certain that thatwas done as ina laboratory, not before the great and new metropolitan spaces but in general in the everyday life of the
cafs, in the private space and the intimacy of the
leisure places and the seemingly neuter.
Futurism, on the contrary, exalting the technical universe as the new nature, did reexamine
the iconography to which the works ofart should refer even if it was no radical at all in the formal vehiele with which this experiment should have been
presented. In the end, Futurism, like the decimoninic authors of treatises, had a mimetic conception of
art, that is, it was conviced that the work of art
should repeat with its beautiful words the reality in
which art was produced. In the same wahy that in
elassical times the work of art imitated the natural
universe and the interest of its products resided in its
hability to reproduce selectively natural beauty -ars
simias naturae- so in modernity, the Futurists
thought, the object of art was to resemble the new
technical and metropolitan nature, repeating its
images, imitating its formal structures, explaining
by a simple reproduction i art, the exterior reality
to the work of art itself.
Cubists and Futurists coincided so in a
point. In theri conception still mimetic of reality.
The function of art was for them, says Philippe Junod, a function of transparency. The works of art
and architecture should teach, reproduce and imitate reality, even when this reality was seen as something different from the reality which fed the artistic experience of the pasto !t's correct that our
perception of reality is more atomized, diverse and
multiple and that justifies the new Cubist representation. But anyway in Cubism still rules the re-presentative over the strictly creative or inventive. Otherwise said, Cubims develops a new approach to
the representation of reality but goes on considering that the objective of art lies in this representation.
Even so Futurism, whithout introducing
profound changes in the means or representative
structures also thinks that it is the representation of
reality which must characterize the art of the future. The only thing which worries Futurism is the
change of reference. The reality to be spoken about
is not any more Victoria de Samotracia but the modern car at great speed.

Nevertheless in both propositions it is not

yet plain, the more substancial change in the condition of modern art which is the loss of the notion of
imitation as a fundamental notion. The idea that
. the work of art does nor refer lO anything at aH outside itself, does not reproduces nor imitates anything, but that it is an invention, a new object, produced by the creative effort of a subject, is, truly,
the essencial characteristic of art in modernity.
The confidence of the c1assical world lies
on the idea of the previous existen ce of an order, of
a nature lO which one can refer as guarantee of the
artificial order of art, of technique and of society.
But the artfulness showed plainly in the
metropolitan experience and in the technical world
go beyond the simple idea of a new nature replacing
the former one. On the contrary, what is peculiar
of the modern world is its conception of reality itself as a product, the result of chance or invention.
Since Kant the conception of the sensible world is
not anymore imaginable outside the projective
world of the subject, or, what is the same, the natural world only exists as a production, as a final result of a building effort of the subject faculties
whithout which reality itself lacks entity and consistency.
To .ari this means that the artistic object
does not depend any more from an order previously established which it has to imitate or to which it
must adjunst anyway, but the work of art creates
its own reality and so its own points of reference.
The Romanticism had glimpsed this new situation since the moment it understood that the artistic production did not reproduce the world structure, above all the soul structure. But even in this
position the subject's soul was conceived essencially
as a permanent reality to which the order of the
work could be referred. Modern thought, on the
contrary, has understood, from Fidler to Semper,
that in art it was essencial the inventive and creative
dimension, productive in short, and that the versatility of reality, the same way that in the mecchanization of experience it was only a consequence ofthe
abandon of all essencialist support conceived as an
element previous to the pure moment of creation.
2. Le Corbusier, between Classicism and
Modemity

"De plus en plus les constructions industrie-

Iles, les machines s'etablissent avec des proportions, des jeux de volumes et matieres
tels que beacoup d'entre elles sont de veritabies oeuvres d'art car eles comportent le
nombre, c'est a dire, l'ordre n (L'Esprit
Nouveau n.o 1, 1920).
The theoretical work of Le Corbusier may
be said lO come out precisely from Cubism and its
fundamental formulations are produced from the
text he published lOgether with Ozenfant in 1918
Aprs le cubisme, to successive contributions he
publishes in the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau from
1920 lO 1925. The position of Le Corbusier and
ozenfant is at the same time critical and receptive
about Cubismo Criticism centers specially in two
points. First of aH Cubism is not in consonance
with the technical and scientific atmosphere of present time. The Cubist artist do es not represent with
vigour the characteristics of the new civllization. In
second place Cubism lacks systematiz'a\ion and
theoretical c1arity enough to face the demands of
this modern world. The demand for purity, -\vhich
means clarty and rigour in the forma principIes
from which shape is constructed, seein to be the
main causes of the remarks Ozenfant and Le Corbusier make to Cubismo
But, on the other hand, their attitude is,
from other points of view, openly receptive and
continuative concerning Cubismo Cubism, even if
it has not succeeded lO create a depurated and adequated language lO modern times, has laid, in a sense, the bases of it when it established a simplification and diversification of the basic geometric repertoires over which shape must lie. In Le corbusier's ambiguity be defended and maintained and a
sign of a inadeuation which must me overcome, is
set aH ambiguity of his own positions as a theorizer
of architecture in modern times.
The attitude before modernity is apparently totaHy open and receptive. With a confidence
that in sorne moments looks as unlimited, Le Corbusier moves in the world of industry and mechanicism. On the one hand we know his appeals to
open the eyes before the technical reality surroundingus. Des yeux qui ne voient pas seems a Futurist
allegation lO look with attention the shapes of the
transatlantic liners, the airplanes and the cars as the
new universe to which artistic production must refer. Henry Dubreuil, the first French divulger of

Taylorism, reflects already then his preocupation

for the new forms of labour organization and the
productive changes, that it does mean.
Nevertheless, this apparent enthusiasm by
Le Corbusier for the technical forms and for the
new industrial world must be evaluated in their
meaning from the moment they express and ideal
of geometric and mathematical purity which wants
lO transcend the anecdotic of the machinist iconography and the immediateness of the imitation in
this universe of shapes.
Refaire la nature en termes de cylindres,
cones et spheres, as Cezane said to Emile bernard in
1904 and as the cubist painters repeated, meant also
lO Le corbusier to transcend the immediate shapes,
were they from the hislOrical styles or from the
new "styles", apparently substituting those embodied by the technical objects.
To re-create nature did mean lO produce
reality starting from an elemental order of which
were debtors both the machine world and the
world af art and architecture. it was not a'question
of proposing a theory of imitation of the mechanics, but lO point out that the universe of the technique obeyed lO pure reasons such as number and
shape, that is geometry, something purely mental.
To that mental order art and architecture should
also join, formulating their own type-shapes, that is
the shapes responding with greater strictness and
perfection lO reasons of number and geometry.
Among the architectural works, of any
time, and the technique works, which have never
been the same, there is to le corbusier a profond
analogy based on their numerical and geometric rationality. it is this analogy what allows us to arrive
to an art which, being free of mehanical mimetisms, is on the other hand profoundly analogous
to the technical world peculiar to modern times.
It's elear that when leCorbusier is presenting these points od view is trying to find a point of
contact between reality of mechanization and art,
by means of badly establishing an ideal system where both would find rationality and meaning.
.
The French academic theory in the second
ha/f of the XIXth century had depurated more and
more the reasons in which harmony and artistic order were sustained. Charles Blanc, in his Grammaire, defended, for instance, the artificial character of
beauty, so that his could not airead y be collected
from the observation of nature but come out of a

23
pure mental ahstraction through which the artistical construction acquired internal unity. On the other hand, the aesthetical positivism has established,
in Guyau, got instance, the permanent character of
the psico-physical reaction of the individual facing
certain stimuli. Like this it found a base the belief
that the archetypic character of certain forms or reladons was based more in the perceptive structure
than in the external natural order, platonically conceived as a reflex of an immutable cosmical order. It
is for the same reason that Taine, in his Lessons
d'esthetique, distinguishes what he calls elementary characters and secondary characters of beauty,
trying in this way to differenciate so the fundamental from the accessory, what is based on the reason
and the number of what is depending on casuality
or me taste.
Le Corbusier, who read this when he was a
student of Arts and Trades in Chaux des Fonds,
will reflect in his writings this dependency of a
treoretical body of academical origin but subjected
to and abstraction process -from the natural to the
mental order- and confrontation with the new technical universe -from the styles of edecticism to
me objects type -of his theory of the pictorial and
architectonic shape.
The idea ofvorder in le Corbusier is profoundly ambiguous and from it carne the diversity
of interpretations it produced. Of course there is in
him a whish of enter in the conditions of the new
technical world without abandoning his wish of
reaching, in time, wearisomely, as a final target to
which all efforts must tend, a certain formal and social order, which he evolked through his texts with
great insistence.
But it is not less certain, that this order as
far as it seems to be establishing a point of synthesis, a place of reunification of the atomized modern
experience, means, in a certain way, an antidote, a
defensive armour precisely against the disorder and
casualty that contemporary experience seems to
present as peculiar to the mechanized world of technique and metropolis.
There is in Le Corbusier a remnant of pythagorism by what there is, beyond the immediate
reality perceived and changing, an occult, immutable and steadfast order to which is necessary to refer in order to be able to escape the dissolution that
the pure modern phenomenism seems to oHer.
When evoking geometry of the objects type as the

reason of the artistic and architectonic shape, Le

Corbusier, like Soriau in his aesthetic theory, attempts a last effort to establish a bridge betwwem
reason and the real world. A real world, which it
was necessary to face not only in contemplative attitude but actively and productively.

3. Prom perception to production.

"We l7elieve, we think and we put as a target the fight for the representation of the new useful
construction of the world. K Malievich, UnovnisArticulo-Programa. Iskusstvo n. o 1. 1921.
The text of Alexander Bogomazov in 1914
"Painting and the elements" is the first formulation
of the target that in the next years would persecute
both Kandinsky and Malievich: to establish an abatract and free grammar to the production of works
of arto In this text from 1914 it is formulated for the
first time the idea that the simplest pictorial element is the doto The dot is the unity lacking dimension and colour from which is possible to deduce
the sistem ofelements of a more complex nature
which are obtained by a simple accumulation of
these primary unities. The succession of dots gives
place tot the lines. The relations of lines generate
planes. The systems of planes organize spaces.
"Dot and line before the plane "by Kandinsky, a
result of the dasses at Bauhaus will present a similar
position. It is the building of an eminentely morphological repertoire, open and unlimited, through
which, little by little, level after level, the different
areas of material production moder and artistic
production are reached.
This way of organizing the physical reality,
susceptible to be produced by the hand of an artist
or by the power of a machine, means to forget all
kinds of hierarchies or tight compartments established by the European cultural tradition -major
and minor arts; architecture, sculpture, painting,
etc.- with their own traditions and their authoctonus techniques to define a continuous, growing
and purely abstract conception of the composition
of reality.
The ambit of art appears as a whole, with
its different stages and the problems inherent to
each of them, but all being linked by a unique organization law reuniting under the same speach any
parcel of the artistic production.

But besides this unifying notion, shared

not only by the Russian Suprematist experience but
also, in a certain way, by the Dutch neo-plasticism
and by the Kandinskian abstract expressionism itself, the notion really new is that all these stages are
characterized, in their configuration, for not obeying imitative laws but pure criteria of formal building.
There is, for instan ce in Malievich, the clear
conscience that art is not a copy of natural reality or
the technical reality, but, anyway, a product of that
same technique. Its contents is not referred to anything else outside itself, not even to the laws or orders
acting as eternal guarantee of rationality or truthfulness of its way of being. On the contrary, when
saying that the work of art and architecture is construction it's not made allusion simply to the dependency of so me technical "constructive" co-ordinates
but that this expression is used in the sen se that these
works are the result of productive actions, ex novo
operations, by which the object is originated, in
sorne way, from something not existing before.
The idea that the artistic is basically creative and not mimetic beco mes central to this position
by which all reality of the technical universe, the
artistic, the utilitarian and the industrial, are always
the result of a work in a production process. In the
case of architecture this new way of seeing things
has a double focus. On the one hand, from me
more abstract point of view of the theory of the
shape Architecture must be considered as the pure
level of space production with which one arrives to
the tridimensionalty of the object and the incorporatio n of the perceptual movement in it. But on the
other hand, re-thinking architecture as a produced
space cannot be done from the abstraction of the
shape but aboye all from the notion of production
applied to all reality.
Which is then the basic element from
which to start thinking the construction of the architectonic? In 1923, the same year Le Corbusier
published his Vers une architecture, Adolf Benhe
did publish his Der modeme Zweckban (literally
" Modern Building of what has a purpose"). Benhe,
who had taken part in the intense ambient of the
Berlinese Arbeirat fr kanst, presents with a greater
radicallity than Mendelshon in 1919 or Gropius in
1925, the new notion that the architectonic elaborated in the immediately preceding years, which
will in the end dominate the conception of modern

architecture as it's explained at Bauhaus as from

then.
The house is the frist material in architecture. This element, which opposes in Benhe to the
plan, means that the initial element of architecture
is the perceptive. To live in a house is not considered something structured and typified but as cumulation of behaviour which ca be subject of psycophysiological measurement, dassification and organization. Analizing sorne works of recent architecture Benhe even says that in the house what matters
is to link to life itself, and funciono
But the whole of the funcions that are elementary in the house and can be identified, atomizing the "vital flux" through repertoires of stimuli
and behaviours, must organize in something making out of them an effective system. For Benhe
this first synthesis of the pure behaviour data must
be obtained in me formal definition of the spaces
adquate to them.
Avant-garde architecture, the same way
than other fields of artistic production, incorporates in this way the notion of space, used up to then
by experimental psychology and by aesthetics, to
define with it the concretion of the basic elements
of functional behavious meant to be satisfied.
The idea that architecture is a space fact
started to develop in the European thought only
ten years ago. Practically with Wickoff and Riegl
the use of the spacial interpretation of the artistic
phenomena is started and me idea that the tridimensional behaviour of our perception is necessarily linked to the space wrapping in which it is produced.
To formulate this notion synthetizing space, as Benhe do es in the quoted text, means to establish an echelonned system analogous to the one already quoted by Bogomazov in which, in formal
terms, the disperse perceptive data are synthetized
in a formal unity with a global character which is
called space.
But it's still necessary to dose this pro ces s
with the third stage of the architectonic activity
through which it is postulated that, even when the
spacial element is the formal synthesis of the architectonic, through the final purpose cannot be space
itself but the total production of reality. "Not the
modelled space but the shape of reality" is the title
of the last chapter of Benhe's book we are commenting on.

24
With this statement it is pointed out that
the purpose of art and architecture does not end in
itself even if it does not spring from anything but itself. It creates reality and is the production and inprovement of this same reality.
Architecture, as an art aboye all synthetical, is consummated making reality, marking the
rules of behaviour to be produced in it and so planning what in the same reality must happen.
In sorne way not only the frontiers between art and life have been scraped out but what
conventionally we should go on calling art and architecture seem, according to this conception, to
take advance in the vital flux in which production
tries to fall upon, with the purpose of conforming it
in function of an idea of rationality and effcetive order of the social process itself.
When in 1928 Laszlo Moholly Nagy publishes the most characteristic theoretical book on
the conception of architecture peculiar to the Modern Movement, Von material zu Architektur, is
only explaining in a clear and ordered way, in a pedagogical manual which will be the reading-book
of the European and American architects as from
1945, what sorne years before had be en formulated
by other theorizers.
The idea of architecture as space, that is as
synthesis of material, lines, planes and texture, to
make this designed space an intrument of intervention and prognostication of the collective behavour, will be formulated with all its contumeliousness.
The work or art, a simple, effective building
of perceptive stimuli ordered to the achievement of
behaviours previously planned, means as much the
consummation of the Romantic ideal of dissolution
of art in life as the clear definition that the purpose
of art does not severs from life itself but, in some
says, is produced according with a previously established plan of social rationality and collective economy.
The example of mechanization in which
reality was not followed by technique but invented
and produced by it, from its atomization and later
reorganization, is translated into this idea of the artistic phenomenon in the fact that the organizative
project too goes literally ahead of any reality previously given.
The abstract grammar of dots, planes and
spaces changes into a formal tool to decompose

shapes and behaviours with the purpose of reorganizing them freely and unlimitedly in some systems
of objects in which the psycophisiological effectiveness has occupied the place of the classical aestetic
experimento
Ignasi de SOLA MORALES

INTERVIEW WITH
SIR JOHN SUMMERSON
Page 92
Taking on account the venvend interest for
neo-clasic architecte John Soane and the general revival of the interest for the architects of the pasto
Quadems asked Sir John Summerson an article
about this architect. Other journals, though had
done the same and in an attempt to avoid repetitions. Quadems has preferred an interview as the
way to introduce us to soane and his work in the beginnings of the XIXth. The interview betheen our
correspondent miss Marta Thorne and Sir John
Summerson, did take place in April at Soane's Museum, London.

Q. Hitchcock has said that Soane's work

does not epitomize an age as did W ren or Adam before him or Shaw a hundred years later. What do
you see as Soane's place in architectural history?
J. S. Hitchcock is quite right. Soane is a
unique figure and it is very difficult to group him
with any other architect in Europe at the time. Peopie tend to look to France and Ledoux, for instance, but there's no real connection. Sometimes they
look to Schinkel, who was a bit later. Once again,
you can't show any actual influence. The fact has to
be accepted that Soane is a unique phenomenom
growing out of the English tradition, strongly influenced by certain theories coming from abroad,
for example; the rationalism of Laugier and the English picturesque. These two flowed together in the
work of Soane. That would be an appropriate way
of describing the Soane phenomenom -confluence
or the fusion of the rational and picturesque.

Q. Wat would be the characteristics of this

fusion?

J. S. They meet in something you can call

the "primitive". Soane had a strong interest in the
primitive. That is really the Soane formula; the rationalism of simplicity and the simplicity of the
picturesque Nature, the column which is just a tree
trunck with the bark still on it. that's both rational
and picturesque. To give another example, the rational implies very simple geometry. Soane's domes don't have coffers. Any international classicist
would have immediately put coffers in his domes.
that is a sort of primitivism which Soane combines
with very romantic lighting, which is the picturesque.
Q. When could the development of the
Soane style be seen?
J. S. I'm speaking of the 17905 which was
the most important creative period of his life when
he was in his early 40s. the work of soane can be divided into roughly five phases: the Studen period,
the Early practice period (1780s); the Middle period (1791-1806); the Picturesque period (1806!21)
and the Last period (1821-33). it was during the
Middle period that he built the house at number 12
Linclon's Inn Field and had just begun to build the
Bank of England.
Q. It doesn't seem correct to state that after
the 1790s Soane only employed his personal style.
The most striking examples contrary to this can be
seen in his use of Gothic. How do you view this?
J. S. Soane form the 17905 really had two
styles; he could always do the full dress academic,
international, neoclassical. he did sorne of the bank
of England in that style and the designs for royal
palaces. but he also had his private style. This is
what surprises and schocks people and arouses
people's curiosity. He played these two games at
the same time, but he didn't run them together. He
had a third game he didn't like playing, which was
Gothic.
Q. Do you think his return to Gothic in the
Last period represented a new search for architectural expression?
J. S. No. His return to Gothis was an imposed condition. He had to make an addition to the
Houses of Parlaiment and, being a government architect he was required to use this style. Then,
sorne of his country house clients requested it. so ane wasn't going to throw away a commission just

because he didn't like doing Gothic.

Q. Youve spoken of Soane being influenced by the international neoclassicism of the moment, can you see Soane tied in certain ways more
specifically the general English culture at that time?
J. S. Yes you could, but its very restrictive,
very tenuous. Of course his maste Goerge Dance
was an important influence and you could say that
the personal Soane style was influenced by Dance.
If you look at it on a broader scale, English culture
at the time was interested in the primitive. for
example, Wordsworth, who was the heir of the
great English poetic tradition was interested in the
peasant and the peasants' language - that simple'
language. This represented a breakthrough from
the formal tradition of Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley
and so on. Wordsworth breaks through into common speech. This can be seen as a parallel with So ane, though I wouldn't stress it very much, because
parallels are sometimes misleading.
Q. Another characteristic of soane, which
seems was inspired by Dance's Allhallows Church,
is omission. Would you comment on Soane's use of
this technique?
J. S. Soane took omission a great deal futher than Dance. In the ordinary Renaissance dome,
the pend'entives are in one spherical plane and the
dome itself in another, but the sort of dome that
Soane used over and over again was an "all in one
piece" dome. Although is is a perfectly simple piece
of geometry, he then uses incised line to give it
rhythm an make ir- e1oquent. A clear example of
this technique is he re in th Soane Museum. The
Breakfast Room dome is about as simple as it can be
- the spandrels and the dome itself run together in
one curve.
Q. Talking about the interior of the Museum, astriking feature is the use of illusion; the
great number of mirros that give the illusion of
space where no space exists, the false curve at the
end of the South Drawing Room ...
J. S. Soane had a phrase that he used sometimes which was "the poetry of architecture". So
far as 1 can see, it meant interesting, exciting lighting. He used to talk of the French "Iumiere mystrieuse" which was mostly, 1 trink, related to the
lighting from hidden sources at the altars in churches. he said of the Breakfast Parlour in his book
that it had this common something of the poetry of
architecture. It is not merely lighting, it's a sense of

25
transparency which can be seen in this house. in the
dining room looking beyond the Greed vases into a
courtyard and through, if the light is right, you'lI
see again through the far window more busts and
antiquities. the opposite wall is a mirror which reflects the ceiling, so you have the illusion, until you
look very carefully, that the space is flowing overo
that runs through all the work of the soane personal
style. Often people say, "ah, here is the pioneer of
the open plan, the precedessor of frank Llyoud
W right, early jugenstil". But, they have nothing to
do with each other.
Q. Peterson in his article "Space and AntiSpace" has stated that Soane was the first to explore
the concept of negative space; calling it the starting
point toward an architecture which occupies the
space of the wall (as in the window niches in the sitting room); that surprising discovery that the thick
wall contains a transverse space which is continuous between the outer an inner surfaces. is this a
characteristic in all of Soane's work?
J. S. I think I see what he's after. It's another way of saying what I've already said. Look
again at the Breakfast Room dome. What is interesting here is that the dome has the same curvature
outside as in. In other words, it is skin deep. Now
if you carry that to the ultimate point of having the
thing the same on the outside as in, eventually the
whole disappears. you wouldn't find this characteristic in the work of anyone else at that time.
Q. It seems to me that space and proportion were more successfully, or at least more dramatically used in the institutional works of Soane
rather than in his domestic architecture. Would
you agree? Were these concepts first employed in
institutional architecture and then "transplanted"
to the domestic?
J. S. He was a country house designer before he became an institutional architect and sorne of
his first experiments in his own style were in domes tic works. The very first use of the kind of
dome and lighting I have mentioned was at WimpoI e in 1791, but the bank Stock Office follows immediately. When he received the Bank commission
in 1792, he built very few houses except his own. I
often tell people when I show them the Museum
that if you can imagine certain aspects about two or
three times bigger, you can get a pretty good idea of
what the Bank of England was like. So in that sense, you could say that Soane was conducting expe-

riments m different places at roughly the same

tlme.
Q. How does Soane's use of ornament fit
into his personal style?
J. S. I mentioned simplicity and this can be
seen very well in the Bank Stock Office. Soane has
thrown away capitels, cornises, architraves, and
entablatures. There is no classical order, but there
is a substitute. Soane the archeologist pins reminders of classical ornament on to this simplified framework. It is a token order consisting of vertical
strips in relief in places where columns or pilasters
might be expected to occur -delicate plaster panels
introduced on the walls, scorings on the spandrels,
etc.
Q. Soane achieved the concept of movement in his architecture, was this the influence of
anyone in particular?
J. S. The best way of putting it is to recall
that Soane had an enormous admiration for vanbrugh. He called him the Shakespeare of architecture. the reson he admired Vanbrugh so much was
beca use he managed his architectural forms in such
a way which did create movement. Sir Joshua Reynolds also admired him for precisely this, stating
that the dramatic or painterly qualities of vanbrugh's buildings, the way they moved forward
and backward in projection and recession while at
the same time giving an exciting silhouette, is a
question of the disposition fo the masses. Soane
sees exactly the same merits in Vanbrugh. In Soane's work there is horizontal movement in the
plan, but at the same time, there is silhouette.
Q. Through Soane's lectures it can de deduced that he didn't hold a very high opinion of PalIadio even through he was a neoclassicist. Do you
see any Palladian influence in Soane's work?
J. S. Soane said sorne rather odd things in
his lectures. For example, he states that Palladio
hadn't a strict system, though on the other hand
you can find busts and early editions of Palladio in
the Museum. I don't think he was very much addicted to Palladio. He admired him as one of the
great figures in architecture, but he, like may peopIe of the time, was very tired of Palladio. The
Adam brothers were frankly bored stiff. When james went to Vicenza, he was really quite beastly
about him. Soane didn't pay very much attention
to Palladio. He regarded him as important, but a
back number. I wouldn't say that you would find

the influence of Palladio in Soane's work.

Q. In reply to one of your lectures, a number of years ago an architect stated that Soane was
always struggling to escape from the techniques of
his time and that if he were alive today, he would
have people busy with experiments in pre-cast concrete. Do you agree?
J. S. I can't agree with that at all. Soane was
not a great technological experimenter. He was
very skilfull and careful in his use of materials. he
always used first rate materials, but never new materials for the sake of using something new. In that
sense you can compare him to John Nash who was
always doing it and getting into lots of trouble for
using iron or stuccO, for example, in the most rash
and adventurous ways. Now Soane wasn't interested in stucco and rarely used ir. What he did like
was high quality briclwork. This house at number
12 Lincoln's Inn Field was built of white brick the
most expensive brick of the time, though very few
houses used it at that time.
Q. Soane seems to be a conflictive figure, in
competition with many architects of his time, Nash
for one ...
J. S. Soane was a very difficult character,
very introverted and obviously very neurotic. he
had an exagerated fear of criticismo Comparing him
with Nash, when you think of Nash, you think in
terms of exteriors broad panoramas, long terraces.
His interiores are nothing remarkable. But, when
you think of Soane, you always think of interiors.
That's wery curious.
Q. Soane in his own lectures seem to hold a
different view of himself than was held by other architects. How could you explain this?
J. S. Soane had the two approaches to architecture as I mentioned befo re, but he never
talked about his own personal style. AlI he taught
was how to manage the international classical style.
It's obvious that he didn't want to talk about his
own style. I know of no place that you can find his
own comments on this. That is very curious. Y ou
would think that he would try to justify it, but no,
he kept it to himself. And of course he was frightfully injured when people laughed at him. And
people did laugh, especially at Dulwich or the facade of this house.
Q. To what would you attribute the recent
resurgence in architects such as Soane, Lutyens,
etc. ?

J. S. There is a resurgence in the great architects of the pasto It's partly, of course, a strong
reaction against the Modern Movement in the
younger generation. They see the slongans and formulas of the MM as pretty empty and worthless.
They think that the MM took architecture in the
wrong direction all together, eliminated the pleasures of architecture, the delights of architecture and
gave us nothing whatever in exchange. The reaction against the MM has been enormously storng.
People hate the whole thing, quite wrongly I think
but these reactions do happen. That, 1 suppose, has
forced people to look at the past more carefully.
But, there is another aspect that has to do with the
extraordinary rise in the success of architectural
history. David Watkin has written a book called
The Rise af Architectural Histary. From being, 30
to 40 years ago, simply an affair mostly of amateur
writing, the whole thing has beco me a professional
activity. There is even now a chair of architectural
history at the University of London, Bedford ColIege. The leading character in all this is Howard
Cullhane at Oxford, who is a very great scholar.
1 think a great many people who had belonged to architecture as a profession to practice, have .
been sidetracked into this more, literally scholarly
sphere of architectural history.
Q. Do you link this rise in architectural
history with the rise in the conservation of buildings?
J. S. The conservation of buildings is quite
different from the conservation of architectural
history through writings. The scholarly assessment
of a collection of material is one thing, and that has
slightly different emotional roots from the conservation of buildings. Of course, they go together
and one really should control the other.
Q. How would you define the present efforts at conservation here in Britain?
J. S. Conservation has gone very, very, far
through the listing of builidings for protection, not
necessarily absolute protection, but temporary
protection so that the building is presented until it
can be proved not as valuable and can be replaced.
There is a vast number of buildings Iisted in this
way. The question now becomes if too much has
been sterilized, whether the country can afford to
maintain so many old buildings, because there is
only a limited number of uses that you can find for
an old building. There is a great feeling that the ste-

26
ri\ization of large are as of towns has gone toO faro
Another direction is the listing of recent buildings.
That creates a very curious situation. We have been
assessing, appreciating and conserving buildings
closer and closer to our own time. What happens
when you get so close that you are listing buildings
that were only completed yesterday. That is a very
odd situation. Does an architect build a building
with the idea that he'll finish it Tuesday and on
Wednesday it will be listed as a valuable building. 1
often wonder what will come from that position,
what will follow. I don't know, frankly.
Q. W ould you suggest an exposition on the
scale of the recent Lutyens exposition for any other
architect?
J. S. One could name a number of architects from the past who are deserving of an exhibition if sufficiendy attractive material could be gotten together: Wren, Vanbrugh, obviously and possibly Hawksmoor. Or possibly those three together. Yes, that would be an idea.
Q. Is there anyone between them and Lutyens?
J. S. Adam? I'm not sure. Chambers? I
think noto Very good, very refined, very interesting, but not really major in the sense of Wren,
Vanbrugh or Hawksmoor. As for Soane, my feeling is that there is already enough of him he re at
the Soane Museum.
Q. What about 20th century architects.
J. S. As for 20th century architects, the names that immediately come to mind are Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies was very fine,
but restricted, lacking the depth or genius of
Wright or Corbu.
Q. What do you think were the reasons for
the overwhelming success and scale of the Lutyens
exhibition?
J. S. The Lutyens exhibition carne about as
part of the revulsion against the Modern Movement and as a looking to the past -to the recent
past. The kind of past only recendy forgotten, a revival of the Edwardians and all sorts of people that
we thought we'd forgotten about. A coming back
into esteem of these architects. Lutyens was absolutely head and shoulders aboye every other English architect of his period and possibly aboye every European architect of the generation born about
1870.
Q. What are your thoughts on Post mo-

dern architecture?
J. S. Post modern architecture, post modern classicism -all thoes things are promoted by
Mr. Jencks. he has a word for everything and his latest word called post modern classicism consists
motly of drawings, very pretty drawings. It seems
to me that we are developing a sort of paper architecture of pretty drawings which people can sell
without building the building. Architecture which
doesn't get built, is that good or bad?
I suppose the main thing about architecture is that
builidngs which do get built are of fine quality, if
you can define what that means. It is important of
couse, that they should not fall down and that they
should keep the rain out, which very few modern
builidngs do. An extraordinary ill is that there are
buildings which receive medals, -the History Library at Cambridge, the University Library at Reading- extraordinary buildings, but the moment
they were built, the rain carne in. That of couse is a
failure of technology.
Q. You mentioned Stirling's work, how do
you view his approach to architecture?
J. S. I have followedJames Stirling's career
with the greatest of interest, because I think he's
brilliant. His Engineering Building at Leicester was
the first thing that one noticed. There he plays modernism as a game. I see him as a great pI ayer of games. he has a great power of analysis. Usually he
takes the program of a building apart and sees the
different elements. He has a strong imagination
and envisages how these different elements could
be put together for fun a game. In a way it's rather
like making a monogram of one's own initials,
which we've all made at one time or another. You
take the three of four initials of your name and try
to piece them together into a patterri which embodies the letters with the utmost economy, but at the
same time makes an exciting pattern. This seems to
me to be Stirling's approach. His buildings at times
seem to come out very odd, like the Cambridge Library.
Q. What about post modern Stirling?
J. S. He's got a desing for the Tate Gallery
which I don't like quite so mucho That you could
call post modern classicism. It is a mixture of themes taken from the Modern Movement and
brought together with sorne obviously surrealistic
ideas. Again, it's an elaborate game. It does perhaps reflect the variety of modern art in the Galle-

ry, but I question people having fun with architecture.

Q. Could you expand a litde more on your
thought about people having fun with architecture?
J. S. That's a thing that rather do es stick in
my throat. When I correspond with Mr. Jencks, 1
rather tend to say, "Look, you're not taking architecture seriously. And he says, "Why not? What
are we here for? Architecture is to give enjoyment
and pleasure. Then I become extremely fuddyduddy, stand on my dignity and state that architecture is an extremely serious matter. A!though it is
certain that you might have fun, right at the center
of architecture is and must be an intense seriousness.
Q. Where can ypy see this intense seriousness?
J. S. For instance, Lutyens had it. Many of
Lutyens houses are gay, frivolous in a way and
beautifully modeled. This is a mixture of gaiety,
frivolity and seriousness. In the Liverpool Cathedral, for example, he became as serious as it is possible to be and the result is magnificent. In general,
what 1 am concerned about is the depth of seriousness that is at the center or architectural thought. 1
don't think it is present in Mr. Jencks' thought and
that is what 1 don't like about Mr. Jencks.
Q. Would you extend that to all pf post
modern architecture?
J. S. Yes, I would.

(Translation by Manuel de Seabra)