Best of 2021

My annual “Best of …” is a personal reflection which normally highlights architecture I visited during the year plus solar house news and other developments of interest. It is tempting (as it was last December) to cancel it because I didn’t travel much. But let’s keep the tradition alive. Here are a few notes in looking back on 2021.

A quick Colorado tour
In June, a lull in Covid cases permitted a short trip to Colorado to help stay abreast of current practices in high-performance and prefabricated homebuilding. We visited Simple Homes, which practices “Swedish-inspired panelized building,” but much simplified (left image below). We also toured the Alpen Windows factory (left)—very impressive products!

Photos by A. Denzer

In Fraser (near Winter Park) we visited the SPARC house, winner of the 2021 Solar Decathlon Build Challenge. It was designed by students from CU Boulder and built in the “Swedish modular style” by Simple Homes. The homeowners were wonderful hosts and very knowledgeable. More about the house here and here.

Photos by A. Denzer

In the News: Gregory Ain
Surprise! It was a big year for Los Angeles architect Gregory Ain (1908‒88). Sometime ago I wrote Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary (Rizzoli, 2008), a full accounting of his works and ideas. Yet revisions will be needed, because two “lost” Ain projects came into view in 2021. In each case I was called upon to comment in the New York Times.

First, in May, the Times revealed that Ain's Museum of Modern Art house (orig. 1950) was ‘discovered’ to exist in the town of Croton-On-Hudson. What a wonderful and meaningful discovery! I blogged about it here.

Then, in October, Alexandra Lange wrote the story of the restoration of the previously-unknown 1952 Marjorie Greene house. Why was it unknown? Ain gave authorship & responsibility for the house to his partners, Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day, as their partnership dissolved. (Did he actively disown the project rather than passively letting it go? This is uncertain.) Let’s credit it to Ain, Johnson & Day. The restoration architects, Escher GuneWardena, did an excellent job and I was delighted to be consulted during the restoration. Lange told the story perfectly.

Admired from afar
In the absence of travel, the fulfillment of new architectural experiences must be pursued vicariously. Here are some projects which aroused my delight and admiration in 2021:
• In Paris, the restoration of La Samaritaine (shown below), by SANAA and others
• Also in Paris, the restoration and redesign of the Bourse de Commerce, by Tadao Ando
• Also in Paris, the “massive investment in cycling infrastructure”
• Also in Paris, Sting’s performance in the Panthéon
• In LA: the renovation of Julia Morgan’s Herald-Examiner building, by Gensler
• The work of LA firm Shin Shin
• The work of Scottish firm Makar

La Samaritaine, image credit

Rest in Peace
We lost several important cultural figures in 2021, but two were particularly important to me. First was London architect Richard Rogers (properly: Lord Rogers of Riverside), memorialized by Oliver Wainwright here. When I have visited London with students in the past, Rogers and his staff were invariably generous and warm in welcoming us, discussing the work, and helping gain access to finished projects. The ‘old’ Rogers office on the banks of the Thames in Hammersmith is shown below-left. And my favorite Rogers project, the Maggie’s Centre at Charing Cross hospital, is below-right and also mentioned in Best of 2015. It shows, I think, a long-lasting influence of mid-century modern architecture from California. In the remembrances of Rogers, I was surprised to learn that he rarely drew. But upon reflection this makes some sense, because we always observed that model-making was a central activity in the Rogers office.

Photos by A. Denzer

And secondly, I was saddened by the passing of Los Angeles architect Bernard Judge, remembered by Carolina A. Miranda here. As I mentioned on Twitter, I interviewed Bernie Judge in 2000 (for my book Gregory Ain) and found him lovely and fascinating. He described the Tahiti project with Marlon Brando as creating civilization from scratch. Here’s a bit from Judge on Ain that ended up in the book:

In this interview, Judge also clued me into Ain's deep interest in psychiatry, a subject which deserves a deeper dive.

Thanks for Visiting
solarhousehistory.com had 21,500 pageviews in 2021. That's about 59 per day.
The most popular blog topics were:
Le Corbusier and the Sun (1,380 pageviews)
Surface Reading (1,200)
Zeilenbau orientation and Heliotropic housing (830)
Edison’s Famous Quote (810)
Tools: The Shading Protractor (620)
Nixon’s Energy Policy (610)
Solarpunk heritage: The Dimetrodon (540)
Art Nouveau and Modernisme (530)

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Best of 2020
Best of 2019
Best of 2018
Best of 2017
Best of 2016
Best of 2015
The Solar House: 2013 Year in Review

Modern Architecture: Source Documents

This is a compilation of links to some of the more important primary sources for the history of modern architecture available on the web.

Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc, Discourses on Architecture, orig. 1863. web
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Thoughts on Style, orig. 1886–1909. pdf
William Le Baron Jenney, “A Few Practical Hints,” 1889. web
John Welborn Root, “A Great Architectural Problem,” 1890. web
Louis Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture,” 1892. web
Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, orig. 1894. pdf
Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” 1896. web
Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," 1901. web
Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” 1908. pdf
Antonio Sant’Elia, “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture,” 1914. pdf
Irving Gill, “The Home of the Future,” 1916. web
Theo van Doesburg, “De Stijl Manifesto,” 1918. web
Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program,” 1919. pdf
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, several writings, 1922–. pdf
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, orig. 1923. web
Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography Of An Idea, 1924. web
Hannes Meyer, “Building,” 1928. web
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City, 1932. web
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography, orig. 1932. web
International Congress for Modern Architecture, “Charter of Athens,” 1933. web
R.M. Schindler, “Space Architecture,” 1934. pdf
Richard Neutra, “Human Habitation Under New Conditions,” 1935. web
Frank Lloyd Wright, “Broadacre City: A New Community Plan,” 1935. pdf
Alvar Aalto, “The Humanizing of Architecture,” 1940. pdf
Walter Gropius, The Scope of Total Architecture, 1955. pdf
Norman Foster, “Design for Living,” 1969, web

And secondary:

Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, orig. 1928. pdf
Hitchcock & Johnson, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, 1932. pdf
Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 3rd ed., 1959. pdf
Carl Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture, 1964. web (login req’d)

Stockholm City Hall

Stockholm City Hall was designed by Ragnar Östberg and built between 1911‒23. In the past I regarded it as only a locally-important building, an example of a minor movement (National Romanticism), and furthermore I felt it was not particularly attractive.

Then I had a fever-dream. This is true: I awoke in the middle of the night with a fully-formed and detailed idea that the Stockholm City Hall has all the qualities to be rated as one of the world’s great buildings. In fact, those qualities are exceptionally strong. My biases were wrong. Let me illustrate:

And please discuss!

Mont-Saint-Michel's sibling

I think everyone’s familiar with Mont-Saint-Michel, the spectacular abbey and village built on a tidal island in Normandy. But do you know about its sibling? Across the English Channel, in the bay in Cornwall, is a similar site called St. Michael’s Mount. They were built at roughly the same time by the same religious order of Norman monks. Mont-Saint-Michel’s nave was built starting in the 1050s, while construction began on the church at the top of St. Michael’s Mount in 1135. They’re also similar in the way that the architecture seems to be visually composed to complete the shape of the land. I think Mont-Saint-Michel resonates for the beauty of its form, its skyline, and St. Michael’s Mount is (almost) just as good.

St. Michael’s Mount isn’t exactly obscure⁠—it gets about 200,000 visitors per year⁠—but I did not know about it until recently and I bet a lot of you will be surprised to learn of it. Certainly it is not included in histories of architecture. Here is the official website for St. Michael's Mount. British writer Christopher Long provides a thorough overview here, though not from an architectural point of view.

Imagine the industrious monks of Mont Saint-Michel, moving back and forth across the channel during the construction of the two sites. It isn’t clear how much architectural ‘exchange’ was involved; the question of shared architectural features has not been explored. I do not find plans or sections of the church at St. Michael's Mount published. Were tools and laborers and building materials shuttled across the channel? I haven’t found a source which answers this, though Long argues the monks of Mont Saint-Michel may have used St. Michael's Mount to control the tin trade from Cornwall to Normandy, and this is suggestive of a vigorous exchange.

More broadly, the Normans were engaged in a great deal of architectural experimentation which traveled rapidly from Normandy to England in the 11th and 12th centuries. (This broader story is poorly-told, I find. The Normans invented the ribbed groin vault and the flying buttress in places such as Lessay, Caen, and Durham, though many textbooks discount the Normans’ contribution to Gothic construction while centering that story in and around Paris.)

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Of course, Mont-Saint-Michel remains the more significant site by far. It’s one of my favorite places to visit, and to share with students. It’s also a stunning example of a great theme in architectural history, which is that important buildings almost always represent layers of historical change. Here’s an image I created which of illustrates some of Mont-Saint-Michel’s layers (not to mention its later use as a prison):

Here is Henry Adams’ description of the layers of history visible inside the church (source):

And, the gilt statue of St Michel atop the spire was added in 1894. 

The Empty Niche

Gabriel, twin buildings at Place Louis XV, 1748 (now Place de la Concorde; Hôtel de la Marine and Hôtel de Crillon). source

I’m often struck by the empty niche, a powerful and profound feature in Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Classical architecture. It could also be called a blind niche or a vacant niche. In many European cities, particularly Paris, you see them everywhere. Ange-Jacques Gabriel’s empty niches at the Place de la Concorde (above) are most notable due to their urban prominence and fine design, but there are hundreds more. Pretty soon, it begins to feel significant when you see a niche with sculpture.

There is almost nothing written about the empty niche by architectural historians. When did this feature, as a purposeful design, first appear? More importantly, what does it mean? Read the great authors and you’ll hardly find a word. How curious it is that such an important architectural detail seems to have been hiding in plain sight!

After much browsing with these questions in mind, I believe Bernardo Rossellino’s façade for the Cathedral in Pienza, 1460, includes the earliest empty niches in Renaissance architecture. But were these intended to be empty, or to hold sculpture? This is unknown. A forthcoming book, Pienza’s Missing Statues, by independent scholar Andrew Johnson, will shed much more light on Rossellino’s design.

Rossellino, Cathedral of Pienza, 1460. source

I believe that Bramante, in the Tempietto (1502), brought the empty niche into full bloom as a purposely-designed, fully-expressed architectural feature. At the Tempietto (below), you can see that the empty niches occur in the lower-level walls as well as in the drum above, and they are forceful. While the emptiness conveys a sense of unfinished work—there seems to be sculpture missing—I believe that Bramante designed these to be left empty.

Donato Bramante, Il Tempietto, Rome, 1502. source

It is often noted by scholars that the Tempietto introduced the ‘High Renaissance’ because of its three-dimensional sculpting, punctuated by the deep shadows in the drum, while earlier works of Renaissance architecture have a flat character.

If I am correct and Bramante gave life to the empty niche, why? And what does it mean? Bramante and other Renaissance artists surely found empty niches in ruined Roman buildings, where sculptures had been removed later. Perhaps Bramante liked the aesthetic of emptiness and sought to capture the quality of ruins in new architecture. Perhaps he wanted to convey a sense of loss or of time passed. (These are tentative interpretations; again, there is virtually no discourse to lean on or against.)

And what does it mean that Andrea Palladio wanted Bramante’s niches to be filled with statuary? That’s how he illustrated the Tempietto for I quattro libri dell'architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), as shown below. Palladio also liked to show ruined classical buildings in a ‘complete’ state. Meanwhile Sebastiano Serlio correctly showed the Tempietto with empty niches in his treatise, normally called On Architecture.

Left: Bramante’s Tempietto in Palladio’s Four Books (1570). source
Right: Bramante’s Tempietto in Serlio’s On Architecture (1537?) . source

Almost contemporaneously, Jacopo Sansovino designed empty niches in the facade for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome, (designed 1509; built 1733-38), but I do not find any empty niches in Sansovino’s more notable work in Venice.

In the 1530s-40s, Michelangelo apparently included blind niches, with square heads, at the Medici Chapel (or New Sacristy at San Lorenzo), where they serve to frame central niches which are powerfully occupied (below).

Michelangelo, Medici Chapel, Florence, 1530s-40s. source

And Michelangelo used empty niches in profusion in the design of the walls around the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica, as seen below in the engraving by Étienne Dupérac. Carlo Maderno followed suit by including empty niches in the façade.

Étienne Dupérac, Saint Peter's Basilica from the South as Conceived by Michelangelo, 1569. source

Again, for emphasis: St. Peter’s Basilica is unquestionably one of the most important and well-known buildings in history. There are empty niches all over it, including in the façade. And yet there is no commentary from architectural historians about this. (Inside St. Peter’s, however, there are no empty niches.)

In the 1580s in England, Robert Smythson included a profusion of empty niches in Wollaton Hall. Smythson had read Serlio.

Further examples go on and on from there, including Borromini at San Carlo, F. Mansart at Val-de-Grâce, and numerous buildings which used Bramante’s Tempietto as a model, like St. Paul’s Cathedral by Wren. Then, followers of Wren in London, and followers of Gabriel in Paris. Since the meanings of architectural features change as they are adapted, we must also consider that the empty niche might have meant something different to Gabriel than it did to Bramante, for example.

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Finally I would suggest that the empty niches of and Rossellino and Bramante had an immediate aesthetic precedent in the blind panels found in earlier Renaissance architecture, particularly Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel (below).

Filippo Brunelleschi, Pazzi Chapel, Florence, 1442. source

I take the blind panel and the empty niche to be different features, but strongly related. Brunelleschi would have found blank panels in Roman buildings he studied, like the Pantheon. He also may have been influenced by buildings of the Middle East with patterned panels or screens (but not figural art), such as Dome of the Rock. Certainly the blind panel, like the empty niche, conveys a sense of unfinished work and perhaps the loss of the classical world. (Brunelleschi’s blind panels are often interpreted as conveying the ‘platonic’ beauty of mathematics.)