Marc-Antoine Laugier Research Articles

Em busca da casa perdida: a cabana primitiva segundo Laugier e Semper

O presente trabalho pretende cotejar duas investigações teóricas sobre a casa primordial, que renovaram as discussões sobre o tema em Arquitetura: a de Marc-Antoine Laugier e a de Gottfried Semper. Em ambos, a habitação primitiva é uma cabana, produto humano, pensado e fabricado pelos homens e, com isso, sujeito à reflexão teórica. Insatisfeitos com a condição contemporânea da Arquitetura, avaliando o momento como uma época de desvirtuamento na prática arquitetônica, Laugier e Semper, cada um em sua época, usaram essa casa imaginada como estratégia discursiva para propor modificações em seu meio. Nesses autores, a imagem da cabana e o discurso sobre ela serviram, em grande medida, como um expediente para tempos percebidos como de crise.

Jean-Louis de Cordemoy

Abstract First published in Paris in 1706, the ›Nouveau Traité de toute l’architecture ou l’art de Bastir‹ by Jean-Louis de Cordemoy marked a provocatively unprecedented point of view in the panorama of 18th century architectural theories. Through a critical revision of the excesses of the Baroque, which was considered the last rhetorical public manifestation of the Ancien Régime, and in the name of a logical renewal of design, the work immediately became the focus of a broad cultural debate, which continued until 1713 in a polemic with Amédée François Frézier. Revolutionary in its challenge to the Vitruvian orthodoxy, the Nouveau Traité developed the search for a Greek-Gothic architectural ideal, which, in a comparison between classical and modern, was realized in the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and developed in France in the effort to define a ›national‹ architectural style. As precursor and inspiration for the aesthetics of Marc-Antoine Laugier, Cordemoy subjected adornment to the laws of bienséance and was a harbinger of the modern functionalist language – the principles of simplification of surfaces, a rigorous volumetric study that anticipated what in later decades would result in stereometric purity of Enlightenment experiments.

Mediating new individual-environment relations through experimentation on ambiance

This article presents an exploration of two previously overlooked aspects of atmosphere. First, that atmosphere lies at the intersection of the natural, built and social environments. Second, that architectural design can bring an existing atmosphere to users’ attention. We present the hypothesis that, by bringing an existing atmosphere to users’ attention, architects can stimulate explorative behavior and the formation of new relations between individual and environment. This hypothesis is based on the ecological theory of perception, examples of contemporary experimental architecture and the ethics of ambiance. We explore our hypothesis with two experimentations on ambiance. The first experimentation follows the method of narrative inquiry and presents a reconceptualization of ‘the primitive hut’ by Marc-Antoine Laugier. Results from the experimentation show how elements such as a gush of wind can be perceived as an architectural quality. The second experimentation follows the method of research by design and presents the theoretically-driven design process of the installation Urban Carpet. The first results show that the installation made users more aware of their body-in-space, and users started interacting with the site in a new way. The experimentations introduce new methods to ambiance research and shift the research focus to mediation of new individual-environment relations.

Independent structure and load-bearing wall: origin and evolution of Lucio Costa’s proposal

The assimilation of the structural skeleton of reinforced concrete or steel is one of the problems that architects face in the last third of the nineteenth century. The characteristic mode of construction of the machine age, enabling both separate isolated supports and partitions as well as raising skyscrapers, the independent skeleton with its isolated supports means that continuous construction sys- tems with massive load-bearing walls becomes outdated. Com- bined with glass walls and light partition walls, visions are fed a column architecture which reminds one of the Parthenon, as well as being preferred by Quatreme?re Quincy, like the “primitive hut” by Marc-Antoine Laugier abbot, inspired by a pure structure which emulates Gothic architecture, as Euge?ne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc wanted. The assimilation of this skeleton implies erce disputes between advocates of a “new tradition” and “new pioneers” who were younger, among whom was Le Corbusier, who proclaimed that “the great architecture of the times depend on a pure system of structure”, and promoted in his work a speci c independent structure of the type proposed in the Domi-no houses of 1915, without visible beams that compromised the free distribution of internal and external walls. For Lucio Costa, the arrival on the scene of an independent Dom-ino type structure is seen as the preferred characteristic structure of the new architecture. This attribute takes the scheme of paral- lel laminated plates on a grid of supports to paradigmatic status condition in “Razo?es da nova arquitectura” (1936). The de nition of modern architecture as inclusive architecture in “Universidade do Brasil” (1937) leads to the notion of modern architecture as a tri-articulated system in terms of structural programmatic and ty- pologies, implying a hierarchical bias system, that includes special structures referring to Gothic architecture and classic continued support structures for hybrid alternatives for the main structure. Such assimilation resolved a long disciplinary crisis gestated in the nineteenth century, identi ed by Costa as ‘two opposing concepts that are always based on all manifestations’ which only de nite- ly terminate with the hegemony of modern architecture around the world in the postwar period, anticipated by a revolutionary transformation of the European avant-garde in the 1920s and the carioca vanguard in the 1930s. This article discusses the sources of Costa’s proposal that were at the center of the debate throughout the nineteenth century and that underlie Brazilian modern architecture. The investigation links the evolution of isolated support in relation to the load-bear- ing wall, under tensions between structural behavior and formal demands, as the origin of a disciplinary crisis. A growing con ict started between the artistic dimension and the technique of ar- chitectural discipline that marks the second half of the eighteenth century, from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and later un- der the Structural Rationalism of the nineteenth century, new methods are brought into confrontation with forms which until that moment came from a purely empirical process. At the cen- ter of these debates are controversies over the freestanding col- umn that led to the emergence of the complete modern sense of structure, a notion that would inform the rst experiments in iron construction and the subsequent development of the emerging structural concept of the twentieth century.

Confronting Classifications - When and What is Vernacular Architecture?

The study of the vernacular in architectural research seems to wage a continuing battle against accusations of antiquarianism, romanticism and simply the questioning of its relevance and boundaries. Some theorists have proposed that vernacular architecture could be more usefully defined through consideration of usage patterns that occur after the completion of the built form rather than the study of the original building intent. This non-reliance on original objectives is somewhat in conflict with researchers who would situate vernacular architecture as irredeemably domestic and contend that it was in an effort to make buildings 'great' from their first conception that architecture as a formal discipline evolved. (1) Vernacular, primitive, traditional, folk and the description of architecture as 'ordinary' or 'every day' are terms that have all been used to denote 'non pedigreed' architecture since Marc-Antoine Laugier's work of the eighteenth century. (2) It is the aim of this paper to explore the many, and sometimes contradictory, classifications of the vernacular and what lies ahead in this field of research. Successive academics in the field, from the earliest studies of the vernacular, have agreed that this type of building is one that does not remain static and is often characterized by its ability to adapt and transform itself to new usages. (3,4) The vernacular maybe shaped over time by the utilitarian requirements of its occupants and indeed all functioning cultures concomitantly synthesize both tradition and innovation in everyday life as a necessary component of development. (5) However if we characterize the vernacular as belonging to a place we must surely omit the strip malls of the present; typifying them as 'everyday' prohibits the inclusion of the handcrafted, lovingly maintained home and if we require that such buildings evidence adaptation by occupants we must ignore the developer kit houses mushrooming up all around us. It is the authors conclusion that the concept of vernacular is fundamentally linked to the social, economic and environmental history of a given region or nation. As a result it is vital that regional interpretations of the vernacular are preserved and allowed to be fluid across academic spheres in a manner not dissimilar to the subject matter itself.

THE ALTAR PULPIT IN ESTONIAN CHURCH INTERIORS

The article focuses on a phenomenon that is related to architecture and art history in Estonia in the late 18th century – the pulpit-altar. In Estonia and Livonia, the construction of pulpit-altars was associated with the building of new stone churches. Although, due to the scarcity of sources, it is not possible to get a total overview of the spread of the pulpit-altars, the architectonic portico-style pulpit-altars are most prevalent in Livonia and primarily associated with the work of Carl Gottlieb and Christoph Haberland, two masters who were active in Riga. The portico-style pulpit-altars combined the functionality of the church plans designed by L. Chr. Sturm, a German educator and architect, and the aesthetics of “good architecture” promoted by architectural theoretician Marc-Antoine Laugier. In Estonia and Livonia, which had come under the rule of Tsarist Russia, Swedish church law remained in efect until 1832, although along with orthodox Lutheranism, Pietism, Herrnhutism and Rationalism were tolerated here. The goal of the Pietists, Herrnhutists and Rationalists was to improve the economic and social conditions in Estonia and, in one way or another, they were all enlighteners. Church construction may also have been infuenced by the educational background of the pastors, as well as the religious and aesthetic preferences of the church authorities. It is difcult to determine the dominance of one or another theological movement. The rural church buildings of the Age of Enlightenment were meeting rooms that were open to people of any social status or Lutheran sect. The pulpit-altars in the churches in Karksi, Rapina and Valga are cov- ered in the article.

Marc-Antoine Laugier’s aesthetic postulates of architectural theory

Views on architecture that hold a significant position in architectural theory are the ones by Marc-Antoine Laugier, a French theoretician from the 18th century. The research on his architectural theory that have been carried out so far are quite stereotypical and concern Laugier?s concept of primitive hut as his only significant contribution to architectural theory. It is well-known that the concept of primitive hut plays an important role in Laugier?s theory and it is what actually maintained his reputation up to now. However, by singling out this concept as an independent one, one actually neglects all the other aspects of Laugier?s theory. The aim of this paper is to present multidimensionality of Laugier?s architectural aesthetics by crossing the borders of architecture and viewing Laugier?s ideas in cultural, philosophical, religious and historical context, as well as applying the integrative process and considering the spiritual paths of the enlightenment movement in the mid-18th century. A special attention is paid to considering the aesthetic aspect which represents the gist and an inevitable part of Laugier?s architectural theory. His aesthetic theory is important in forming the classicist style, and despite its radical character, it influenced many architects in France and the rest of Europe. We may see Laugier as one of the first modernists considering his structuralist logic of the constructive circuit of architecture and aesthetic modesty of decoration. Laugier?s functionalist attitude that the constructive circuit should at the same time represent a decorative element of architecture confirms the thesis that modernist approach has its roots in the 18th century.

DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY: Blade Runner's Critique of the Intention of the ‘Primitive Hut’

This essay examines our struggle with the technology of architecture by considering the conceptions of the ‘primitive hut’ put forward by Vitruvius, Marc-Antoine Laugier, Gottfried Semper, and Joseph Rykwert. In claiming the ‘natural origins’ of architecture, the notion of the ‘primitive hut’ has paradoxically supported the intention of architecture to cut itself free of nature and the earth. Architecture has, in this way, held open the possibility that it might overcome the limitations that frustrate its attempts to accommodate. In the film Blade Runner, both the depiction of a futuristic urbanism in a state of decay and the expression of an ambiguous relation between the built and the natural provoke a reassessment of the architectural ‘blade’ that desires the separation between nature and technology. Both Rem Koolhaas' discussion of the skyscraper and Piranesi's etchings depicting classical scenes will be viewed as similar critiques of this dichotomy. By framing the examination within K. Michael Hays' critique of the extreme positions of determinism and autonomy in architectural theory, the paper concludes that criticism has a responsibility to mediate these extremes by expressing the nature of the technological/architectural struggle.

ON THE EXORCISE OF THEORY

Focusing on the influential 18th century text by Marc-Antoine Laugier—“Essay on Architecture”—what I trace in this essay is a certain affinity between ornamentation and theoretical writing on architecture. What I point out is that not only does theory play the same supplemental role with respect to its subject as ornamentation is said to play with respect to the aesthetic object, but also, the same paradoxes and inconsistencies that permeate the historic marginalization of ornamentation in architecture, permeate the self-marginalization of theoretical writing on architecture.

La recherche du beau idéal dans l'Essai sur l'architecture de l'abbé Laugier

Alexis de Hillerin : The search for ideal beauty in Marc-Antoine Laugier's Essai sur l'architecture. Many art historians refer to abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier's work, but it seems to have been little studied in literary history, despite the fact that this erudite Jesuit was a man of letters in an age when the search for the universal still concerned literature. Laugier was not an architect and his aim was not the planning of works but their conception and integration into a clearly defined philosophical and poetic space. He sought in architecture the norm for an eternally valid ideal beauty. Thus his Essai is more than a work representing fashionable ideas in 1753. This pedagogical book, based on Paris urbanism, contains an aesthetic programme corresponding in part to a renewal of classicism in both architecture and literature. Thus, at a time when the cultivated reading public was proud of understanding the secrets of architecture, it claims to provide a true poetic art transposed to the builder's art.

From Dublin to New Orleans: Nora and Alice’s Journey to America 1889 by Suellen Hoy, Margaret MacCurtain

Some of the Wnest examples of garden buildings in Ireland are the temples constructed as garden retreats or banqueting spaces in the Classical style. The Classical temple, its natural lineage popularized in Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture (1753), was the ideal structure through which a member of the upper class could grace upon the landscape a tasteful ediWce that indicated an advanced level of architectural sophistication and that complemented the serenity of the structure’s natural surroundings. The social order to which the elite of Ireland aspired was, by the late nineteenth century, beginning to crumble. Changing socioeconomic conditions sealed the fate of the great house and elaborate demesne garden, and, as large estates were being subdivided, so too was the context of individual garden buildings and follies being eradicated. With the exception of the evocative stone and glass follies of James Scanlon and the recent work at Lexlip Castle in County Kildare) and Glin in County Limerick), there is virtually no contemporary folly and garden building construction . Despite the eVort of a few enthusiast groups in the Republic and the National Trust in Northern Ireland, extant follies and garden buildings rapidly decaying and suffer from neglect and repeated vandalism. Howley makes an impassioned plea for the preservation of these structures, yet he realizes that “it is a cruel irony that buildings which, at the time of their inception, deliberately projected a romantic air of antiquity and ruination, have now inherited an authentic mantle of decay.” —Christine Patricia James From Dublin to New Orleans: Nora and Alice’s Journey to America 1889, by Suellen Hoy and Margaret MacCurtain, pp. 143, Dublin: Attic Press, 1994, £9.99. The diary entries of Honoria Prendiville and Alicia Joseph Nolan which form the main portion of From Dublin to New Orleans are colorful, humorous, witty, entertaining and thoroughly compelling—not, one has to concede, what we might Wrst expect from two devoted Dominican Sisters in the 19th century. These diary entries, edited by Suellen Hoy and Margaret MacCurtain, chart Nora’s and Alice’s 1889 voyage across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean, and up the Mississippi into New Orleans where they were to begin new lives as Dominican Sisters. To complement these accounts, Hoy and MacCurtain provide detailed introductory material and thorough footnotes. This historical prefacing and footnoting sets the context of the journey and provides important background, but the material thrust of the book, as its editors certainly intended, is contained within the diaries. Hoy discovered the diaries in Dublin at the Dominican Sisters’ Archives at Cabra in December of 1991 and was immediately intrigued. Why were the diaries in Dublin and not New Orleans? BOOK REVIEWS 183 Hoy and MacCurtain discovered that he diaries were not personal journals, but were instead written for the girls and women of the Dominican convent and boarding school back at Cabra; the journal entries, we learn, were meant to be read as a chronicle of Nora’s and Alice’s “adventures.’” The story that Nora and Alice record is not an unusual one, and the editors point out that these two young women were “two among many” single Irish women who left Ireland to serve God in America. However, their individual accounts present unique and personal stories of their journey. Unlike many of the “coming over” stories of Irish immigrants, the journals of Nora and Alice present an almost wholly positive picture. While the initial leg of their trip, from Dublin to Liverpool, was marked by mishap, the greater part of the trip was over calm seas. The two women recount a journey that—except for early seasickness—seems much more like a pleasure cruise than an immigration tale. Their major complaint is boredom, and even that subsides as they gain their sea legs. The most striking part of the journals involves what must have been Nora’s and Alice’s Wrst encounter with blacks. Upon reaching St. Thomas, Nora records her Wrst impressions of the local “inhabitants” as “not exactly black, though darker than copper colour.” Nora later talks with the captain who “hates the very sight of them,” and Hoy and MacCurtain suggest that Nora’s and Alice’s own attitudes...