·        Manhattan Building – William Le Baron Jenney, 1889-91

·        The base of the building is made of granite, then bricks are used on the upper floors. Terracotta is employed to frame the windows that surmount small carved mensola. Ornament is not conceived as something abstract and vitruvianesque, it is not to be positioned according to the classical rule, but returns to the level of perception of the eye, playing on and enhanced by the principle of contrast, and placed were it can be perceived by the public.

·        Monadnock Building – Burnham & Root, Chicago 1891

·        This building was made in the occasion of experimentation on masonry structure. It is not reinforced. The wall starts on the level of the floor with an important thickness that reduces as we climb up (rastrematura). This principle was transformed into something very interesting especially on the corner, at the height of the first floor. All in all, it is a polished architecture that completely lacks decoration.

·        Reliance Building – Burnham & Root, Chicago 1899

·        This building will inspire Mies Van der Rohe, who, as many German artists during the WWII, left Germany and moved to Chicago, where he had the possibility of realizing skyscrapers using new materials and building

·        procedures. In order to do so, he had to face and study the school of Chicago and understood the need of renovating it to satisfy the new market.

·        This building, in particular, has a very thin structure proceeding up to 14/15 floors, again played on repetition. The skeleton system gives the possibility of flexible plans. There are windows protruding outside on a facade that is completely not bearing.

·        Talking about decoration, it is the beginning of the floral motives that sometimes talk about the functions inside. The solution that Mies will adopt is to be found in the corner: there are two colliding lines that transform into a complex element with a richer articulation than needed. It is an optical variation emphasizing the verticality of the building. It is not held from below, it is suspended on the facade, and the ground floor is completely polished. It is declarative about the relation structure/form.

·       Tectonics, Kernform vs Kunstform

·        Why do we insist on the relation ornament/structure?

·        Many of the modern architects studied in Europe and brought the texts to the USA spreading the notion of TECTONICS. It is another invention of XIX century, or better, a new translation of architecture in tectonics terms.

·        Karl Gottlieb Wilhelm Bötticher (1806-1889) published a book called Tektonik der Hellenen, where he studied the relationship structure and form in terms of:

·        • KERNFORM - structure, static part

·        • KUNSTFORM - decorative system

·         

·        Tectonic doesn't exist if not in the relationship between two things, something inside and something superficial.

·        It can be a relationship of identity or complete difference (Mangiarotti and Nervi vs bell tower in the typology of skyscraper we saw before).

·        In the majority of cases the decoration takes over the structure tending to hide it, in other cases the decoration makes the structure even more explicit, becoming a transfiguration of the construction system. In the Greek temple, with the introduction of stone, the metope used to cover the wooden structure behind, in a process of transfiguration of the structure into form. The same happens with the use of iron structures and concrete covering.

·        Gottfried Semper (1803-1879)

·        He wrote some of the most important books for architectural theory, where he adopted a very scientific approach studying the origin of architecture starting from neolithic time till the XIX century. He simplified his theory saying that men operate in 4 techniques:

·        1. Interwine (textile)

·        2. Shape (ceramic)

·        3. Assemble (tectonics) - with linear elements usually in wood

·        4. Build (stereotomy) - using shaped solids to build complex architectural figures

·         

·        These methodologies are at the base of architecture.

·        He was the teacher of some American architects. This debate can be summarized in the “hut” in the picture: an assemblage of wooden elements which make the structure and the stoff that creates the boundaries of the construction: each element has a different architectural procedure and a different function, reflected on the different form.

·        He also dedicates a whole chapter on CHAIRS, speaking about what is NECESSARIUM and what is just comfort.

·        The development of this idea on larger scale can be seen on the Chicago architecture.

·       Adler & Sullivan

·        Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) and Dankmar Adler (1844-1900), at the time, offered the most advanced solutions for the issue “structure and form”. Sullivan was a pupil of Semper, moved to USA and became an engineer and architect during the explosive period of Chicago architecture.

·        When Sullivan and Adler started to work, the architecture of Chicago was already quite shaped.

·        Auditorium Building - Sullivan and Adler, Chicago, 1887-89

·        The two architects worked the same atelier and realized under commission the Auditorium Building, a block building which in fact was tridimentionally complicated. They tried to control this volume with one gesture.

·        It is a theatre for more than 2500 people, hosting a hotel and a series of apartments in the same complex. Adler and Sullivan developed an advanced engineer machine using all the technological innovations known at the time, also in terms of lightning and electricity. The interiors are characterized by arch lit with electrical lamps. We enter from the street and are guided to the theatre through a series of galleries.

·        On the facade we see the idea of making the entire building of one material: granite changing from a rustic look until becoming a very polished surface as we climb up, creating a rhythm.

·        Wainwright bld St Louis - Louis Sullivan, (1890-91)

·        A similar principle is applied to Wainwright bld St Luis, finally on the URBAN SCALE, on an actual skyscraper. It is a building of terracotta colour. The base is different from the fusto and the crown, they behave in different ways and have different rhythm. The base is polished with a rhythm given by columns and is separated from the fusto through a cornice.

·        We clearly see how the vertical elements are structural, polished, while the horizontal ones, decorated, are not. However, the ornamentum is present: it is on the entrance, on the cornice and everywhere I can see it from the inside or the outside. They are 'American ornamentation' trying to overcome the example of the European one.

·        This decoration is frequently made of terracotta.

·        Terracotta elements can be excavated: it is a negative decoration working thanks to shadows and serving necessarily to protect concrete structure.

·        “The ornament is applied in the sense of being cut in or cut on… yet it should appear when completed, as though by outworking of some beneficient agency, it had come from the very substance of the material.” Louis Sullivan

·        Carson, Pirie, Scott, Building - Louis Sullivan, Chicago, 1899

·        Again, the themes are repeated in a very schematic way. It is an architecture, with commercial functions, that behaves in an anonymous way in plan and structure. The facade shows interesting topics: there is a strong division between the ground floor and the mezzanine, both fully decorated, and then the repetitive fusto characterized by rectangular windows that change module in the corner to deal with the curve.

·        The entrance is very elegant, richly ornated with floral motives to enrich the experience of entering.

·        The upper floors are carved in stones with elegant fascias and the only decoration is placed outside the window frames, the only visible spot looking outside the window.