Semper, Viollet le Duc, and Ruskin and a New Modernism

        The 19th century was a time of readjustment throughout almost all aspects of the world. Of course, the new age brought an era industrialization- factories, the use of new materials such as steel, many new technologies, etc. But with an exponentially increased number of people moving to urban centers to engage in this new factory/industrial way of life, cities sprang into life faster than their technology could keep up, causing the era to be defined by a jumble or disorder.
     

        As art is a reflection of the human experience, it is to be expected that the art/design world would also plunge into a parallel frenzied spin of new ideas. In particular, architecture as a field of design would soon need to define its own style for this new age of industrial technology.  In this age lacking any kind of stylistic clarity, a few names in the field came to stand out as a "lighthouse" of direction.

Gottfried Semper

        Although some of their ideas are sometimes similar, most, much like rest of the period's unorganized craziness, often they collide at key points. These three thinkers, Eugene Viollet-Le-Duc, Ruskin, and Gottfried Semper, and John Ruskin, all came to become some of the greatest thinkers/philosophers in the history of architecture.

Eugene Viollet Le Duc

        In many ways, Le Duc and Semper had similar ideas. They both looked  at architecture through the very methodic, scientific approach of philosophers of the Enlightenment.  Semper especially took this methodic approach to another level, creating a scientific method of design and even going as far as to create a formula for good design. From this formula and research, he concluded that there were four main aspects that would create beauty in architecture: the hearth, the mound, and the enclosure and roof.        
   
        He differs from Le Duc, however, in the fact that all his research on design has to do with people, reasoning that the socio-political situation of the time is the main defining factor in good architecture. Because of his belief that architecture was always the result of its contemporary time and people, he was very much in favor of creating an entirely new style for the age rather than just recreating one of the previous styles of architecture, differing from Le Duc and Ruskin who both were in favor of the Neo Gothic style.

Viollet Le Duc design for a concert hall, 1864

        Le Duc was not as interested in the anthropological side of architecture, but in a purely rational
explanation of design, saying the modern architect must "analyze the masterpieces of the past, reduce them to a process of argument, then apply the argument to his own problems."(2) He thought that there were two types of rationalism in architecture: 1) the formation of a building's structure to create a perfectly efficient building, and 2) the outward expression of a building as a reflection of its materials and form. He was a very individual thinker, disagreeing with many institutions of architecture, especially the Beaux Arts Academy.

        The overlap in Le Duc and John Ruskin's philosophies is definitely not substantial. However, they were both enraptured with the Gothic style, and convinced it was the key to the new stylistic definition of architecture in the 19th century. They also both praised the idea of truth in materials, although were dissimilar in which materials were best for the time.

        But further than these issues, they disagreed on almost every point possible. While Le Duc was an "do-er," actively designing and building in the field, Ruskin was more of a writer and thinker, involved in many other fields as well as architecture- literature, philosophy, art, etc.

        For one, they had completely different ideas of the role/status of the architect. Ruskin was convinced that the the craftsman is the real force behind good architecture, believing in the true beauty of the handmade, saying "the architect [should] work in the mason's yard with his men." (1) He was not concerned with perfection, even going so far as to dislike it; "no architecture can be truly noble which is not perfect." (1) This of course completely contradicts Le Duc's entire thinking that every part of a building must be logically and rationally perfect, even up to a building's ornamentation. Furthermore, Le Duc was one of the first to elevate the role of an architect above other craftsmen to where it is today.

        While Le Duc was an active restorationist of old buildings, he had his own ideas about what was a good restoration job, making the point that he thought a good restoration job brought in much more than just a new paint job or a fix of old problems; he thought that it could breath new life into an old building to make it even better.  In contrast, Ruskin was completely against the idea of restoration, wanting only to purely to preserve historic buildings as they were.

        These three architects/philosophers I think really set the stage for a new era. Although they were all very different from each other, each had a concrete idea of what he thought should define architecture stylistically in the new Modern era. Although none of them was, or possibly could be, absolutely correct, I think their ideas really help to look at architecture in a new way both for people today, and architects of that time who came to see their work as a stepping stone into new ways of thinking about architecture.

1. Pevsner, N. Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc: Englishness and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture. (pp. 6-43). London: Thames and Hudson.   

2. Summerson, John. (1904). Viollet le Duc and the Rational Point of View. Heavenly Mansions, and other essays on Architecture. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. 140-158. Print.

3. Hvattum, M. (2006). Gottfried Semper and the problem of Historicism. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians