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Although moving from a spacious country lot to a smaller city home can be challenging, seasoned interior designer Jan Speziale proves that the testament to good design is in the details.

“I’m a Type A trying really hard to be a type B".  says Jan Speziale, one half of the design duo behind award-winning Barnard & Speziale De­sign Associates Inc. in Waterdown, Ontario. "It's the Virgo in me," explains the interior design vet­eran of 35 years, "I'm very particular". Whether or not you follow the celestial skies, when she de­cided to downsize from a one-acre country prop­erty to a 1,850 square-foot Burlington home, the house that Jan built is proof that good design is in the details - from the polished nickel knobs, right down to the travertine and walnut floors.

Just don't describe the cathedral ceiling in her great room as white. °I never, ever do pure white. I find it too cool. I prefer a softer off-white that has a creamy undertone to it". Likewise, to "ground" the mainly sandstone palette in her walls, drapery  and upholster}', she selected charcoal - not black - for the upper triangles that support the arch. A zebra skin rug and vintage painting ties the look to­gether.

Besides the aesthetic minutiae, Spe­ziale also had her hand in the larger structural aspects of the construction and design. One of the main changes affected the original L-shaped kitchen and breakfast nook. While a second eating area ranked low on Speziale's wish list, she really wanted space so she could elongate her dining table and accommodate ten people. "My family is big and my siblings and I are all foodies".

So, in order to make wav for her coveted saber-leg walnut centre piece table, which stretches to 109 inches, Speziale deleted the dinette space, added stools to the food prep island, and reconfigured the adjoined space to showcase a double-lane galley kitchen. "'There's usually up to four people in there whenever we all get together". She also added a backdrop of alternating-height, custom cherry wood cabinets to create "interest".

With no line of vision overlooked, a liquor cabinet was designed to hide the sink: "I didn't want to see the faucet when I was sitting in the great room". Thus, connected to the gener­ous granite countertop, a "little bar" cuts into the horizontal plane, infus­ing a dose of visual tension. "When­ever I entertain, that's usually where people gather," she laughs.

A second structural change allowed for more natural light. With only four feet between each house, windows were conspicuously absent on the east and west walls. Consequently, the three lookouts on the blueprint's north face were traded for more ex­pansive sliding doors, which lead to the back patio.

More walls were shifted in the den. In lieu of the existing guest bedroom with closet and full I7ath, a two-piece powder room entered the main floor scene, leaving more square footage for a study in the sunny wing, now pa­pered in striking red grass cloth. The resident leather couch, one of the few pieces that made the transition from country to urban, is a matching poppy hue. Mention the colour red and peo­ple kind of get freaked out, says Spe­ziale, hut the interesting thing is, the more you use a colour, the less domi­nant it becomes. "I had a red room in my old house and I loved it. It's en­ergizing and I find it very warm and inviting".

"The master bedroom and en suite bath, however, sit at the other end of thee colour spectrum in "Gray Wisp," a soft grey/blue tone by Benjamin Moore. "I wanted it to be verb= calm and serene". Fit for a Virgo Queen, the room boasts a reproduction antique head- and footboard and crystal chan­delier with contemporary drum shade. For that added bit of personality, Spe­ziale accessorized her Louis-inspired French chest - stacked by Venetian­ style mirror - with two cut crystal lamps. "[ love the way it sparkles".

The third major structural change was realized in the loft; a mini-guest studio complete with bath. "Visitors love i t because it's like a private getaway up there," explains Speziale. "On plan, it was just one big open space.l wanted to create as much storage as possible and that was a great place to do it". Speziale created an alcove around the bed by pulling the feature wall forward and creating two 24-inch deep ward­robes on either side. "One can never have too much closet space," she says.

The garden/extended living room posed similar storage challenges. Short of dragging all the outdoor furniture to the front of the house and into the ga­rage for the winter, a place was needed to store it. And so, rather than having an open pergola, Speziale built a struc­ture with cedar shake roof and skylight. A back wall, she notes, also camouflag­es her neighbour's eyesore shed.

Although the shops and restaurants along the waterfront are within walk­ing distance, Speziale admits it took her some time to get used to living so close to others. "I think people are al­ways surprised when they come here because they don't expect to see some­thing so private that's downtown". But it was vital for her to create this little outdoor oasis. "I love the sound of the wind and the trees". The Vir­goan surmises, "1'm an earth sign; so I guess that's why".

Consumers often find them­ selves torn between the push to green along with other social and economical factors, such as convenience, appeal, cost and com­fort, but what if one solution marries them all?

An ancient concept, now a modern revolution in sustainable energy seems to be achieving just that.

Next Energy, a Canadian manufac­turer of geothermal heating systems  recently partnered with Yanch Heat­ing & Air Conditioning, to complete an installation on the northern shores of picturesque lake Joseph in Ontario's beautiful Muskoka region. The project aimed to achieve the basic demands of what most new home owners and those looking to green retrofit are oth­erwise finding challenging; a balance between savings, convenience, com­fort and class.

This Port Caning home built by Tamarack North Ltd. first prescribed an energy source that was both cost effective and accessible in an area where natural gas is unavailable and fuel transport posed a significant chal­lenge. With rising energy costs and a looming oil crisis, stable resources also weighed heavily. In addition, the home's stature also called for an aes­thetically pleasing design and sensible levels of inside comfort. The clear solution was geothermal.

The different units provide indi­vidual heating zones, which allow oc­cupants to control temperatures inde­pendently in different areas; an advantage not offered by most alternative heating methods. The process also eliminates the use of combustion, making for a safer, cleaner living environ­ment, with no danger of carbon monoxide and no fossil fuel emissions.

Requiring just one-third of the space of traditional systems, geo­thermal is typically designed to fit with the provisions of varied projects and can accommodate any combination of radiant in­ floor heating, forced-air heating,  domestic hot water and air conditioning all from the same unit. It can function well in many situations, even as a practi­cal solution for large commercial build­ings or swimming pools.

Geothermal integration produces many additional benefits as it has with the Lake Joseph project; it is quiet, discreet and more aesthetically pleas­ing. The equipment is compact and self-contained, with no noisy outdoor units or exterior wall venting, which also improves building envelope weather tightness.

President of Tamarack North Ltd., Chris Madden says although geother­mal installation is initially an expen­sive investment, it is a growing con­sideration.

"In our market... we are finding that the customers are quite willing to con­sider geothermal heating. It is the most expensive type of heating to install, but at the level of construction we are doing it's becoming quite accessible".

“Though seemingly costly at face val­ue, geothermal configuration can mean significant savings over time, protec­tion front volatile commodity prices and a decrease in the drain on resourc­es for the future. Canadian consumers who retrofit currently receive up to ten thousand dollars in rebates through both federal and provincial programs, and though projects vary, they will typ­ically see a turnaround on their invest­ment in just four to seven years.

"Compared to propane and oil, geo­thermal is about one-quarter the op­ crating cost, so economically it makes sense and is also extremely green with no emissions," said Regional Sales Man­ager with Next Energy, 'Jim Weber.

Weber says homes converted to a Next Energy system from oil or electric Will cut about 75 percent off their year­ly heating and cooling costs, or up to 80 percent in the case of propane. A typi­cal retrofit only takes about two to three days for installation and is designed to last beyond the life of the home.

The impact on the environment is clear. Geothermal has immense po­tential to reduce carbon emissions and considerably reduce global warming. Data from Natural Resources Canada and tile Environmental Protection Agency show that geothermal systems have the least environmental imprint in comparison to any space conditioning technology available; something to consider and part of a bulk of knowl­edge Next Energy is working to com­municate to the general population.

"Next Energy goes to market trying to educate consumers ...we aren't just selling a box or a furnace, we're selling a concept," explained Weber.

"Through our partnerships with companies like Yanch 1-Heating our goal is to achieve guaranteed success for the homeowner, where they aren't just purchasing from a contractor, but in­stead a network of support systems."

One of the few companies that spe­cialize only in geothermal Weber says, Next Energy- has no distractions and are 100 percent focused with ten years of hands-on experience, bringing more than just an exceptional product to market. In a grow­ing Canadian trade the company is poised to become an industry leader and despite the recession is holding strong.

Worldwide, geothermal energy is also emerging as a marked renewable force. Ac­cording to the Geothermal Energy Association, geother­mal sources currently supply energy to meet the needs of 60 million people worldwide and are a growing commodity in 24 countries. Developing countries are the top benefactors, as these sourc­es preserve the natural environment, provide energy and economic inde­pendence and can meet the need for electricity in remote regions.

With its adaptable and efficient structure, geothermal could revolu­tionize energy consumption in Can­ada and combat the coming energy crisis, but Without any solid plans for mass production Canadians must sup­port their own sustainability for now -one home at time.

Spawned from a family with three generations of development experience, Toronto based Kil­barry Hill Developments ties at the forefront of innovation in building production and design. Co-founders and brothers Shawn and Jordan Meck­linger, and their uncle Jerry Vlamid form the com­pany's underpinnings, while Shawn's wife Kailee co­ordinates interior design aspects. Their partners, the Ross family, also offer over 30 years of expertise in the construction industry and are an integral part of Kilbarry's early success. The team currently faces the competitive world of project design and execution with a prime advantage; each team member yields varied areas of specialization, that when combined, are highly compatible and effective.

"Kilbarry offers a one-stop shop. We handle all of your building needs, whether it he providing architectural drawings, taking your plans through the permit process, providing interior design con­sultation as well as construction management," says Shawn, Kilbarry Hill's President and Director of Business Development.

Each project irradiates the company's diverse ex­pertise, ranging from prestigious custom residential and vacation homes, to the eclectic College Lanes Down Loft Development situated in Toronto's South Annex area. The loft interiors are space conscien­tious and meld a practical, modern ambience with plush, luxurious city living. Each unit, although constrained to a location within a small laneway, boasts 13-foot high ceilings, ultra modern Italian kitchens, front and rear courtyards and walk out patios. Aspects of their layout are clear indications of design concepts, created to combat and diminsite limitations, and are the outcome of the com­pany's adeptness.

The lofts are not alone in their peerless presenta­tion of Kilbarry's unified building and design meth­ods; each of the company's projects exhibit novel and synthesized characteristics. Shawn's favorite edi­fice to date-a tailor-made residential cottage on Lake Simcoe featuring custom ^millwork, exquisite trim, state of the art technology and grand ceilings.

"The care put forth by all of our trades really shows in the attention to detail," said Shawn.

In the near future the team is focused on ad­ditional custom residential projects on Lake Sim­coe and in Toronto. In the long run, focus for improvement is expected in expanded services, likely including the integration of consulting into the company's legion of already existing multi-faucets.

Designed by Kenzo Tange; completed 1981

In 1976 the Nigerian state authorities believed that a new federal capital city would facilitate the creation of a “federal character” and thus resolve the problem of nepotism and relieve ethnic tensions among the 250 cultural groups that constitute the Nigerian nation. Abuja and its architecture, it was believed, would also remove the colonial identity that the erstwhile capital city of Lagos was thought to bestow on the Nigerian people.

As a result, the role of Lagos as the federal capital of Nigeria has been in question from 1960, when Nigeria became independent, to 9 August 1975, when General Murutala Mohammed set up an eight-member Committee on the Location of the Federal Capital of Nigeria. The task of the committee was to review the multiple roles of Lagos as the federal capital of Nigeria, the capital of the state of Lagos, and the economic capital of the country.

The committee concluded that a new federal capital would improve Nigeria’s national security, enhance Nigerian interior development, encourage the decentralization of economic infrastructures from Lagos, and enhance the development of an indigenous Nigerian building culture and industry. Finally, the new capital would emphasize Nigeria’s emergence from the civil war of 1967–70 as a more united, stable, and confident country. Nigerian lawmakers who shared the opinions of the committee justified the idea of developing a new federal capital by suggesting that there existed a fundamental need for a place where all Nigerians could come together on an equal basis to help foster national unity. Moreover, advocates of a new federal capital city raised the problems of overcrowding and lack of land for future expansion at Lagos as well as the existence of severe social inequality in the colonial cities of Nigeria. As a result, Abuja was conceived as a place that symbolized Nigeria’s autonomy from British colonization, urban segregation, and a federal character that all Nigerians could share in regardless of ethnic heritage. According to the committee and the International Planning Association (IPA), the new capitol would provide “a balanced development focus for the nation”. They chose Japanese modernist Kenzo Tange, a protégé of Le Corbusier, as the principal architect for the city plan.

The federal government of Nigeria produced a schedule for implementing the committee’s recommendations on 4 February 1976. Decree No. 6 established for Nigeria a Federal Capital Territory—an African version of the District of Columbia—a neutral ground where a Nigerian federal character would be developed for the good of all Nigerians. The government took an 8,000-square-kilometer parcel (more than twice the size of the state of Lagos) out of three minority states. Abuja is located on the Gwagwa Plains in the middle of Nigeria; its high elevation and numerous hills contribute to a year-round pleasant climate, one of the major attractions that influenced the committee to select the site.

Abuja was conceived as a city for three million people to be developed in 20 years, and its master plan symbolized the themes of democracy and Nigerian unity. Construction began at Abuja in 1981 under the leadership of President Shehu Shagari (who was later deposed), who was anxious to move from Lagos to the new Federal Capital Territory.

The Nigerian authorities of state insisted that Aso Hill must be the most prominent element within the Federal Capital Territory. Aso Hill is a huge granite outcrop (1,300 feet high) that dominates the landscape of Abuja and its vicinity visually and physically, giving the city a natural east-west axis. Moreover, creating the image of a democratic landscape that emblemizes the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (patterned after the United States’ checks-and-balances system of government) was also an integral part of the Abuja urban design scheme. As a result, a democratic shrine called the Three Arms Zone was created at the foot of Aso Hill, making it the focal point of the city and the locus of power of the federal government of Nigeria. Abuja’s Three Arms Zone is one kilometer in diameter, and the buildings of the National Assembly, the Presidential Palace, and the Supreme Court are located within it. From Aso Hill in the east end of the city, one moves through the ceremonial Abuja National Mall, which is also patterned after that of Washington, D.C. However, the axial view of the mall is flanked by high-rise federal office buildings on both sides, terminating first at the quintuple towers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and finally at the National Stadium in the west of the city.

Although the Abuja master plan also aspires to position the city as a major pan-African commercial, financial, and political center, it is dominated by a rhetoric of Nigerian unity, national identity, and democracy. As a result, it is characterized by unresolved tensions between its nationalist themes, the intentions of the emergent Nigerian intelligentsia who inherited political power from Britain, and the intentions of the architect. First, Tange’s fundamental concept for Abuja’s master plan resembles the plan for Tokyo. One could argue that Tange’s plan to incorporate the Japanese modernism of Tokyo represented an attempt to meet the needs of Nigerian national identity; but concerns remained as to whether the architect’s uniform design for the monumental federal buildings reflected the interests of the emergent Nigerian elite who inherited political power from Britain, or whether the new structure contributed to the erasure of certain ethnically based social boundaries. The insistence of the federal government of Nigeria that Aso Hill be the most prominent object in the Federal Capital Territory suggests that it was adopting an ancient “pagan” ritual site (Aso Hill) as a means of reinventing a Nigerian “federal character,” something quite different from the version of modernity that Tange envisioned. Advocates of the Aso Hill complex envisioned it as a sign of stability, nationality, and cultural myth making in the vibrant, new capital city.

Military dictators interpreted Abuja’s master plan as a document that required the isolation of the Three Arms Zone (as a shrine to power) from the rest of the city to make it inaccessible for public gathering. The river that runs down the foot of Aso Hill forms a moat between the central part of the city and the Zone. This moat can be crossed only by bridge, and the bridge is designed to be easily barricaded in time of civil disturbances. Hence, marching to the shrine of power, as is the case in most democratic societies, has been neutralized by the manner in which the master plan was interpreted and implemented. Any march in the city will stop at the national mall in the central district. This outcome was not by accident but by the careful intentions of the military dictators who built Abuja and who deliberately chose to ignore existing traditional urban examples in Nigeria. The ideology that privileges a landscape that can forge national unity in Nigeria will face several practical challenges with the national assembly and the civilian president, who took over power on 29 May 1999 after 15 years of continuous military dictatorship.

Designed by Hans Hollein; completed 1982

Since the 1990s, it has not been uncommon for architects and their clients to break with the two previously prevailing alternatives—temple or warehouse—for art museums, but such a typological rupture had been dramatically anticipated two decades earlier, by Hans Hollein in the Museum Abteiberg, a unique building tailored to an unusual site and a distinctive collection. The Pritzker Prize laureate of 1985, who was born in Vienna in 1934 and is an artist, teacher, and creator of furniture, interiors, and exhibitions, has at Mönchengladbach assembled a virtual primer of museum design, one that has brought a heretofore unknown visceral excitement to the vocation of museum going. In contrast to later attempts in this genre, however, Hollein’s achievement has contributed to an intensified appreciation of the museum’s contents rather than making a personal statement at their expense.

Although Hollein has learned from the institutional buildings of Louis I.Kahn and Alvar Aalto, he listens to his own music, which—to pursue the metaphor—includes concerti from the 18th, symphonies from the 19th, and popular songs from the 20th centuries. His eclecticism served him well in this complex commission, made more difficult by the need for the museum to serve urban as well as aesthetic ends. Hollein has linked Mönchengladbach’s town center on the heights with the medieval Ettal Abbey (today the city hall) on the slopes below, assembling a multi-tiered museum from a series of discrete elements of different sizes and shapes that provide a series of delightfully varied indoor and outdoor rooms. Distributing the individual volumes in space rather than containing them within a monolithic whole allowed him to maintain the picturesque scale of the town; at the subterranean level, the disparate sections are united.

Although designing a museum is always challenging, it is perhaps less onerous when, in contrast to those encyclopedic institutions that are in continual flux, its holdings consist of a focused group of works. Kahn found such a golden opportunity in the Kimbell Museum, and Hollein has exploited the similar possibilities here, where he worked closely with the director, Jonathan Cladders, in formulating the program. They believe that today the museum itself represents a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), “a huge scenario into which the individual work is fitted…not the autonomy of the work at any price but the deliberately staged correspondence between space and work of  art” (Klotz, 1985, p. 19). This especially applies to contemporary art, which frequently is deliberately produced for a museum setting. The plan that Hollein and Cladders evolved is without precedent for this building type. None of the customary tropes, whether conventional or modern—vaulted galleries arranged symmetrically, the universal space, the proverbial white cube—are present. Instead, the combination of small, contained cabinets and larger rooms perfectly accommodates a collection that, although including some historical pieces, is mainly focused on the post-World War II period and, although international, is richly endowed with work by American artists of such competing movements as Minimalism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Pop. Many works are in the form of installations without customary boundaries or frames and do not necessarily require natural light.

From the town, one enters the museum precinct via an elevated walkway that leads to a stone-faced platform whereon is set a tower containing administrative offices; a library; workshops and storage; a cubic, top-lighted undivided volume for temporary displays; the shedroofed, zinc-clad “clover-leaf” pavilion for the permanent collection; and the entrance temple. The platform also covers museum spaces excavated into the hill, and from it, one can descend gradually to curving terraces, furnished with sculpture, that border the gardens of the former abbey; beneath a portion of the terraces are additional exhibition areas.

Hollein has rejected the prescribed routes encountered in traditional museums for mysterious, polymorphous paths that compel the viewer to wander on her own and discover unexpected places, then to turn back on them or chance on new chambers. Because chronology is not the issue it would be for a historically based collection, the ad hoc character is stimulating rather than frustrating. Upstairs and downstairs, under- and above-ground, the variously configured galleries illuminated by diverse means—daylight through windows and skylights and artificial light via incandescent, neon, and fluorescent fixtures—permit individual works to be perceived in the setting most sympathetic to their makers’ intentions. The most organized part of the display areas comprises what Hollein calls the “cloverleaf”—a group of seven “kissing squares,” to use Kahn’s formulation, that are traversed at the corners. Set under saw-toothed skylights, these rooms are ideal for big pieces by such artists as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, and Roy Lichtenstein. There are also curved rooms, some with undulating walls that are positively Baroque in character; double-height spaces and circular steps add further drama. Hollein’s rejection of the convention of amorphous flexible areas, dominant since the 1940s, in favor of a rich variety of specific and distinctive spaces, would in the 1990s become a popular solution for art museums—yet another example of the way the Museum Abteiberg adumbrates many later schemes for this type of institution.

Also prescient is Hollein’s interjection of playfulness and irony into the reverence that typically pervades museum design. Although marble clads some of the surfaces, it is combined with less elevated masonry materials like brick and sandstone. Reflective as well as transparent glass appears; zinc is placed beside chromium and steel. One side of the temple-like pavilion that forms the main entrance sports graffiti in red paint, matching the color of some of the railings. Exterior light fixtures have an industrial character in contrast to the lush surrounding landscape and the textured brick walls and paths. The visitor, constantly encountering the unpredictable, is sensitized to the daring originality of the art displayed.

It is instructive to compare Museum Abteiberg with another German museum from the same period that similarly had a profound effect on subsequent museum design—James Stirling’s Neue Staatsgalerie (1977–84) at Stuttgart. Both are set on irregular terrain and require urbanistic interventions, but Stirling’s solution revives and updates the 19th-century museum paradigm, whereas Hollein has jettisoned all previous solutions. Both make reference to industrial as well as classical buildings and use the technique of compositional collage, yet their differences illuminate the manifold possibilities inherent in the museum program.

The 20th century is indelibly marked by the new vision realized by modern art. This vision is no doubt a response to the success of material science, but it is also a cultural phenomenon, an invention that helps us adjust to the new and often daunting horizons that science and technology have opened up. Architecture has benefited as much from that new artistic vision as it has from directly adopting new technology, and the invention of abstract art is one of the important strands of this development.

Abstract art is a product of modern times. It can be seen to follow from the loss of conviction sustained by the ancient view of art as imitation, or mimesis, that is, representing the visible world and placing humanity into a visible narrative. To say that photography supplanted representational art would be to oversimplify the story, but it certainly played a part, and throughout the 19th century one can trace the steps by which another standard gradually took the place of the time-honored one. In British Romantic painter J.M.W.Turner’s tumultuous landscapes and in the Impressionist Claude Monet’s freely composed water lilies, we see a progression in which more and more weight is given to the artist’s feelings in front of the motif, or the subject. It is through personal selection that the artist abstracts the aspects that he or she desires to emphasize and out of them constructs the composition, no longer bound by verisimilitude. Abstract art thus has two principle components: abstraction and expression.

It was perhaps the fin-de-siècle French painter Paul Cézanne who brought the movement to its point of precipitation since it was largely he who substituted the actual vertical plane of the canvas for the virtual horizontal plane of Renaissance perspective. His painting of a curve in the road creates a feeling about the road disappearing from view, not through perspective but by the multiple relations invented in a flat composition (Turn in the Road, 1882, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts). Equally, it was Vincent van Gogh who painted with swirling pigment what he felt rather than what he saw. By 1907 the promptings of popular science were suggesting that physical reality must be quite different from appearance, the search was on for the “fourth dimension,” and the time was ripe for the invention of Cubism. Analytical Cubism allowed the artist to give a metaphysically complex visual account of the subject, and Synthetic Cubism introduced fragmented material from the world (newsprint, textiles, paper, string) into the picture plane, or the artist’s composition. During World War I, abstraction progressed toward the sublime purism of Piet Mondrian’s gridded, neoplasticist compositions and the ineffable weightless rectangles of Kasimir Malevich, who opened a perspective with Russian Suprematism that reaches through to the end of the century in the language of abstract planes used by architects such as Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, Rem Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid.

Architecture in the 20th century made its first steps in the shadow of the Arts and Crafts tradition, with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Josef Hoffmann, and Michel de Klerk, among others. Architecture was as much in need of liberation as the plastic arts, but it was at the same time in need of a new authority to replace ancient authority, something more compelling than the intuition of the artist. One answer was found in the authority of science. For architects, the innovative language of abstraction was not so much a gateway to freer personal expression as an escape from the conventions of traditional construction. It was no longer necessary to affix the Antique orders to facades or to follow academic rules of ordonnance and symmetry in drawing plans. Abstract forms opposed no difficulties of a formal kind to the idea of a plan freely following the program and so freed architecture to create its own myth, that of functionalism. To the subjective intuition of the artist, functionalism opposed a firm objective law similar to the laws of nature.

There was a short time, hardly more than a year, when architecture came close to sharing with art a complete autonomy of form. The year was 1923–24, when De Stijl leader Theo van Doesburg collaborated with the architect Cornelius van Eesteren in designs for villas. In projects such as Space-Time Construction No. 3 of 1923, his use of axomometric projection obscures for a moment the difference between an art composition created on the flat plane of the canvas for contemplation and the threedimensional equivalent constructed in real life for use. When van Doesburg designed the interior for the dance hall L’Aubette in Strasbourg, using dramatic rectangles set diagonally on the walls and ceiling, he could not compensate for the ordinariness of banal adjuncts, such as balcony rails and fixed seating, which seem to remove the viewer completely from the world of contemplation proper to fine art. An even more poignant case is that of the Schröder House in Utrecht, where Gerrit Rietveld’s exterior, like his famous chair, can certainly be contemplated as a kind of artwork, while the interior is mediated by the dynamic use of movable screens for privacy, reducing the object of contemplation to a practical convenience.

The paradox was fed by the polemical ideology of such protagonists of the Modern movement in architecture as J.J.P.Oud and Le Corbusier, who led the way in identifying architecture with engineering, thereby conceptualizing it as a subject that develops through research and discovery, in which the interest will always be in the novel and not in the already known. According to the credo of International Style, decisions in architectural design should result from rational analysis of the functions, replacing the traditional practice of starting from precedent, which was suffused by convention and custom.

For some, the architect could not claim to shape his building from his inner perceptions; it had to be shaped from something more socially relevant. Functionality provided a rule apart from the purely subjective, and it was a rule that had little precedent in the visual arts. The impact of abstraction within architecture was to create a new duty toward the social function of the building and toward the physical material of construction. Empirical needs would guide form, and form would be free to follow function in the ecstatic exercise of liberation. Within architecture, then, abstraction and functionalism appeared to share a common destiny.

In fine art, Mondrian remained the most extreme purist, and there is no question that he identified avoidance of figuration as an expression of spirituality. In the heroic 1920s and 1930s, artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse preferred to distort appearances rather than abandon them. In the case of Fernand Leger, his Communist sympathies kept him firmly focused on the essence of the worker, and between Le Mécanicien (1918) and Abstract Composition (1919), there is only a difference of degree; the figure remains. This enables us to say something clear about abstraction, namely, that it is not exclusive. It is clearly possible to employ abstraction in due measure without abandoning figuration.

The nascence of abstract art seemed to suggest a solution for architecture by redefining nature itself as a kind of artist. This was the argument advanced in an influential book by D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917). Thompson conceived of nature as the supreme designer, producing functional structures that were also intrinsically beautiful. Not only do the skeletons of dinosaurs follow engineering principles, but the patterns of growth in hard-shell mollusks observe strict mathematical rules, as the strictly logarithmic series preserves a constant proportion. Nature thus seems to be the penultimate designer, and the products of nature are “naturally” beautiful. As art approached nature in following natural law, it could appropriate nature’s beauty. In the book Circle, edited by Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson, and Naum Gabo (1937), it is clear that abstract form had taken on an aura of objectivity at odds with the reality of its subjective origins.

It is not until De Stijl in the Netherlands and the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School in the 1950s that one finds another impulse to abandon figuration, above all with the mural-scale abstract canvases of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko. In postwar painting the expressive gesture generated the source of meaning, and the authenticity of that gesture became the guarantee of artistic truth. However, this immediacy was difficult to achieve within architecture, with its reliance on physical reality. The urge toward purity that the viewer found in Mondrian and later in Rothko is marked with renunciation, and renunciation is truly difficult to reconcile with functionalism. In art, all arguments are ad hominem, and what one person can do is always exceptional. The idea that abstract art approached a deeper level of reality than figurative art proved difficult to sustain as a general principle, and to this extent it seemed that the hopes of objective validity pinned on bringing abstraction into architecture have proved illusory.

During the crystallization of Modernism in the 1930s, it was simply not possible to eliminate appearances; as long as buildings had to have openings such as doors and windows, as long as they could be entered and used, they clearly served as utilities. Use created meaning, at the most basic level, because doors not only permit entry but also denote entry. The struggle for purity turned into a struggle to eliminate ornament, and this was accentuated by the belief that only through standardization could the building’s economy be fully realized. To match transparency in art, we have austerity in architecture, epitomized by the German architect Mies van der Rohe. Standardization was considered the key to realizing the full benefits of mass production. With standardization went repetition, and the monotony of the curtain wall in identical glass panels reduced the possibility of expressive form. It was enough that buildings were massive and impressive, tailored to the demands of modern business, and expression was demonstrated in seeing which city had the tallest building.

From the pluralism of Postmodernism, it became evident that standardization was not as effective in economic terms as marketing. The appearance of a steel-frame building could be changed at will in order to present a spectacular image; the facade became a surface of signification, and irony, humor, and eclectic style were manipulated in such a transformation. Strict economy of construction held less expressive importance. With the end of the 20th century, it became possible to see that the authenticity attributed to abstract forms was balanced by the freedom they conferred upon expression. This was manifest in the 1960s and 1970s within fine art but not within architecture. Today, in the work of Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid, there is no longer any concealment of the expressive gesture.

Except in extreme cases, such as aircraft design, forms are primarily derived not from a scientific analysis of the functional requirements but from the creative feelings of the designer. The architect can have feelings about the function as well as everything else, but he or she is now permitted to sublimate these into a more general concept of the purpose and meaning of a building. So, for example, Libeskind’s Holocaust Museum in Berlin is conceived from a universal set of emotions including suffering and persecution, and the jagged forms of the windows are an expression of this emotive tenor and not a response to the practical uses of daylight. In the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Gehry’s abstract, dynamic forms derive from the capacity of the computer to control the fabrication of complex components and allow him to generate an architectural composition as powerful as anything displayed inside the functional building that it also is. In this way, the architect has acquired the technical means that will allow him or her to “build” gesture with all the immediacy of the painter. Abstraction emerges as an acknowledged means of expression.

Architect, Austria and United States

The Austrian-born architect Raimund Abraham has played an influential role in architectural discourse and education over the last four decades. His challenging oeuvre of unbuilt work, consisting almost entirely of seductive architectural renderings, delineates a complex architectural position revolving around subversion, metaphor, and a fascination with archetypal forms. His recently completed high-rise in Manhattan for the Austrian Cultural Institute is the most recognizable of a portfolio of built work that has brought together many of the philosophical themes that have preoccupied this enigmatic architect over a prolonged period.

Raimund Abraham was born in Lienz, Austria, in 1933 and was educated at the Technical University in Graz, graduating in 1958. In the early sixties Abraham followed in the footsteps of avant-garde groups such as Archigram, the Metabolists, and fellow Austrians Coop Himmelb(l)au in offering proposals for technology-driven Utopias providing modular living environments capable of embodying the future requirements of civilization. In these early projects, Abraham imagined cellular capsules that would be inserted into vast organic communities comprising monolithic megastructures and colossal bridges. These early idealistic visions demonstrated Abraham’s mastery of drawing and collage that would suffuse his later work.

In 1964 Abraham moved to the United States to further a career in architectural education, taking up a position as assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1971 Abraham has been involved in education at a range of major international universities, holding professorships at the Cooper Union, the Pratt Institute, and the graduate schools of Yale and Harvard. In 30 years of academic life, he has also held visiting professorships at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Architectural Association; and various other North American and European universities.

Abraham’s attitude to education, and his architectural practice, is subversive, and his position is often critical of the architectural establishment and its compliance with the principles of modern architecture. Abraham sees in modern architectural discourse a rupture with history that has prevented architects from understanding completely the elemental process of architecture. For Abraham, the 20th-century preoccupation with fashion and style has prevented a thorough understanding of the principles of building and the clarity of thought that they demand. Abraham urges a return to the a priori principles of construction concerned with the nature of materials, site, and program. Abraham posits architectural drawing as an equivalent means of expression, where the paper becomes a site for the poetry of architecture. The intellectual act of building surpasses the ultimate physical product. For Abraham, built architecture is often endemic to the forces of compromise.

Throughout the 1970s, Abraham galvanized his theoretical position by undertaking an extensive series of unbuilt houses concerned primarily with Heidegger’s notion of dwelling. Abraham maintains that “collision” is the “ontological basis of architecture,” offering as an example the horizon as the most basic junction between the earth and the sky. Abraham defines the process of architecture as either digging into the earth, or reach-ing for the sky—all building is intrinsically related to these primordial elements. These elements become central to many of Abraham’s designs of the period, such as House for the Sun and House with Two Horizons. The abstract house designs sought to strip architecture down to its most essential state, arranging architectonic elements within a formal language of rectilinear forms often embedded within the topology of a generic natural site. Presented largely in rendered axonometric projection, the designs crystallized complex theoretical principles into simple spatial meditations, as is evidenced by titles such as House without Rooms, House with Three Walls, and House for Euclid.

In the 1980s Abraham’s attention turned toward monuments, concentrating on historic European centers such as Venice, Berlin, and Paris. Abraham’s unbuilt projects from this period interweave themes of juxtaposition and subversion to arrive at a new monumentality capable of questioning the historical significance of architectural form. The instability inherent in Abraham’s immersion within the historical landscape is most evident in his projects for the city of Venice, the Les Halles Redevelopment in Paris, and the competition entry for the New Acropolis Museum in Athens (for which he was short-listed).

One of the most poignant projects from this period is the Monument to a Fallen Building, completed in 1980. The project commemorates the collapse of the Berlin Congress Hall in the same year, proposing a prism-like vault in which traces of the former structure are symbolically revealed. Similar themes are inherent in his 1981 project for a Monument to the Absence of the Painting Guernica, which mourns the loss of Picasso’s masterpiece from its provincial base to another larger museum in Spain. Abraham also addresses the issue of ownership in his project of 1982 for a monumental church that would straddle the Berlin Wall, bringing a transcendental spirituality to the contested space of the wall. All of Abraham’s projects from this period deeply question the foundations of architecture and languish after a lost or forgotten meaning in architectural discourse.

As well as his portfolio of unbuilt work, Abraham has also contributed important buildings both in America and in his homeland of Austria. These include individual houses, low-cost housing, and several commercial buildings. The completed buildings demonstrate a fascination similar to his unbuilt work, using archetypal forms, layering, and concision to question conventional architectural form.

In 1988 Abraham was runner-up to Daniel Libeskind in the competition for the extension to the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Two years later, he successfully won the commission to build the New Austrian Cultural Institute in Manhattan (other nominees included Hans Hollein and Coop Himmelb(l)au). The recently completed 20-story tower rises in the shape of a dramatic wedge from a narrow and heavily constrained site obscured almost entirely by neighboring buildings. The front facade is layered with a sloping curtain of cascading planes of glass punctuated by solid elements. Celebrating the link between earth and sky, the powerful form of the tower and the heavy plinth of the podium reinforces Abraham’s intention to return architecture to its most basic and primeval elements.

Abraham’s challenging and often confronting work occupies an important place within architectural discourse, fostering principles of resistance and legislating against mediocrity. His attempts to return architecture to its philosophical origins in both built and unbuilt projects are intrinsic of a position that attempts to blend the disparate forces of philosophy, poetry, and architecture.

Selected Works

New Austrian Cultural Institute in Manhattan, New York City, United States, 2002

raketenstation hombroich, neuss, germany

Architect, Finland

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto, whose architecture is often described as organic and close to nature, is regarded as one of the most significant architects of the 20th century. The majority of historians and critics emphasize three aspects in Aalto’s architecture that set it apart from any other architect’s work and explain his importance: his concern for the human qualities of the environment, his love of nature, and his Finnish heritage.

It seems that Aalto’s architecture is a socially refined reflection of Le Corbusier’s work, a masterly connection of avant-garde culture with traditional values. Despite being well integrated into the art world, apparently Aalto did not hesitate to include in his designs unfashionable issues that were dismissed by other architects of his time: individuality in mass housing, social equality in theaters, and his foible for details, such as extreme, carefully planned light systems in public buildings. From this angle, Aalto turns out to be a pure dissident of the avant-garde, emphasizing the complexity of architecture by leaving aesthetic values behind him.

Even before adopting the language of modernist architecture, the young Aalto was determined to be as avant-garde as possible, which in Scandinavia in the early 1920s meant a sophisticated and mannerist neoclassicism. His early work shows the influence of anonymous irregular Italian architecture and neoclassical formality as developed by 19th-century architects such as Carl Ludwig Engel, and these strategies were to remain important throughout his career. His most interesting buildings from this time are the Jyväskylä Workers’ Club (1925), the church (1929) in Muurame, and the Seinäjoki Civil Guard Building (1926) and the Defense Corps Building (1929) in Jyväskylä. Aalto organized the facade of the Workers’ Club like the Palazzo Ducale in Venice by setting a heavy, closed volume on airy Doric columns on the ground floor. The almost symmetrical facade is challenged by a Palladian-style window that is shifted to one side, marking the location of a theater on the first floor. The church in Muurame, which also recalls an Italian motif, namely, Alberti’s Sant Andrea at Mantua, is on the outside very much into the neoclassical tradition, whereas its interior emphasis on light anticipates later church designs, such as the churches in Imatra and Wolfsburg.

In 1924 Aalto traveled to Vienna and Italy with his wife and partner Aino Marsio, where he made several sketches that had a great effect on their later work. However, Aalto did not ignore the development in continental Europe, either, and his conversion to international functionalism can be traced back to the autumn of 1927, when he and Erik Bryggman jointly designed a modernist proposal for the Kauppiaitten Osakeyhtiö office building competition. Le Corbusier’s reputation among Scandinavian architects had been widely disseminated by a 1926 article in the Swedish magazine Byggmästaren by Uno Åhren, and Aalto’s first functionalist buildings, the Standardized Apartment Building in Turku (1928) and, more important, the Turun Sanomat office building (1929), demonstrated all of Le Corbusier’s five points.

The beginning of international recognition was marked in 1929, when Aalto was invited to join the newly founded CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) and he attended the second congress of CIAM in Frankfurt on the theme of “Housing for the Existenzminimum.” Other masterpieces of functionalism were created by Aalto in the following years, including the Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1933) and the Viipuri Library (1935). During this time, Aalto started designing bent-plywood furniture, which he later developed into standard types. From 1942 Aino Aalto directed the Artek Company, which had been set up in 1935 for the manufacture of this furniture. These experiments also affected the architectural designs: in the mid-1930s, Aalto introduced the famous curved, suspended wooden ceiling as an acoustical device for the lecture room of the Viipuri Library. Although the functioning of this element is very questionable, curved walls and ceilings became typical of his later work.

In the 1930s, surprisingly enough, Aalto, who had until this point been known as the most modern of Finnish architects, began returning to the vernacular tradition. With the Finnish Pavilions to the World Exhibitions in Paris (1937) and New York (1939), he infused functionalism with his own organic alternative and radically parted ways with mainstream International Style. The critics appreciated this move, for they saw Aalto’s primitivism in connection with his origin in the exotic and unspoiled Finland.

Most important for Aalto’s architectural reputation was Sigfried Giedion’s analysis in the second edition of Space, Time and Architecture (1949). Giedion’s interpretation of Aalto’s work as Finnish, organic, and irrational helped Aalto to achieve worldwide fame after World War II. The integration of building and nature emerged as a central theme in Aalto’s work; this is exemplified in his designs for the Sunila pulp mill (1937) and the Sunila housing for employees (1939). In the engineering staff housing, the first fan-plan motif appears, which became a crucial element in his designs. Characteristic of this period is his interest in natural materials, such as wood, brick, and grass roofs, as he demonstrated in one of his masterpieces, the Villa Mairea (1939) in Noormarkku. The villa is often praised for its harmonious relationship with nature and reference to old Finnish farmsteads. However, Finnish critics did not originally recognize Aalto’s buildings as particularly Finnish but, rather, as Le Corbusiersian with Japanese touches. Gustaf Strengell noted that the interiors of the Viipuri Library exhibited strikingly Japanese characteristics in their use of light wood in its natural state. The Villa Mairea was originally a collage of Le Corbusian modernism with Japanese tearooms, African columns, Cubist paintings, and continental Heimatstil until it slowly became a paradigm of “Finnish” or “natural” architecture in the modern architectural discourse.

After the war Aalto was again commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a student dormitory, where brick was a typical material for the other campus facades. The Baker Dormitory (1949) was Aalto’s first experiment with brick, and throughout the 1950s his oeuvre was dominated by the use of red brick. Later, he used the brick as a metaphor for standardization, claiming that the cell was the module of  nature, and the brick would occupy an analogous position in architecture. His most important works of this period include the Expressionist House of Culture (1958) and the National Pensions Institute office building (1957), both in Helsinki. The House of Culture consists of a curvilinear theater and a rectangular office block, a typical Aalto arrangement of organic versus orthogonal shapes, where the public space is articulated in a free form and more private functions are placed in rectangular shapes. As in most of his designs, all elements including the apparently free form follow a hidden geometric grid, with the center being a fountain in the courtyard, where a giant hand presents a tiny model of the building. Inside the theater, he experimented again with the acoustic ceiling but also drew on references to the facade of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. The Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952), another brick building, is a small version of the piazza theme that Aalto elaborated further in the town center of Seinäjoki (1956–69). After the death of Aino in 1949, Aalto married the architect Elissa Mäkiniemi, for whom he built the Muuratsalo Summer House (1953), or experimental house with an inner courtyard. The exterior walls are painted white, whereas the inner walls show brick patterns of various De Stijl compositions.

 Viipuri Library Lecture Hall, Vyborg,
Russia, designed by Alvar Aalto
(1927)

Although Aalto’s brick buildings from the late 1940s and 1950s won international critical acclaim, for his commissions in Germany—the Hansaviertel House (1957) in Berlin, the Neue Vahr Apartment building (1962), and the parish centers in Detmerode (1968) and Wolfsburg (1962)—he chose international white modernism while at the same time continuing to use brick in the Otaniemi (1974) and Jyväskylä (1971) universities. This choice may seem surprising, given that brick had a strong regional connotation in Hanseatic cities, whereas in Finland the dominant building material was wood. Hence, Aalto’s use of brick in Finland cannot be understood as primitive or regional, and he himself connected brick rather with Central Europe, whereas Finnish architects of around 1900 tended to view it as Russian. Aalto did not want to simply reproduce tradition, and so he worked in both Finland and Germany explicitly against tradition and concentrated more on the symbolic selfidentity of the community than on local traditions or building techniques.

The German project Neue Vahr, a slender skyscraper in a suburb of Bremen and the most daring use of the fan plan, is odd in another way. Although in 1934 he had proposed high-rise housing for Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, Aalto was generally known as an outspoken critic of tall buildings. He argued that high-rise apartments were, both socially and architecturally, a considerably more dangerous form of building than single-family houses or low-rise apartments, and therefore they needed a more stringent architectural standard and greater artistry and social responsibility. Despite these reservations, in June 1958 he was appointed to build the 22-story tower Neue Vahr and later the Schönbühl high-rise block of flats (1968) in Lucerne, Switzerland. However, his solutions were praised as outstanding examples of modern housing, and both the Hansaviertel House and the Neue Vahr supported his reputation as a humanist architect among his modernists colleagues.

In 1959 he received the commission for the Enso-Gutzeit headquarters on a prestigous site next to the harbor of Helsinki. In this work he referred partly to the notion of an Italian palazzo while at the same time responding to Engel’s neoclassical harbor front. With its location right next to the Russian Orthodox Uspensky Cathedral, the strange composition of the House of Culture is repeated: a rectangular modernist office building adjacent to a curved public brick building. Aalto’s public buildings of this time are in the tradition of Bruno Taut’s Stadtkrone: they are meant to support the identification of the individual with the community and—appropriate for monuments—are usually cladded with marble tiles. The striped marble facade of the Cultural Center (1962) in Wolfsburg is reminiscent of Siena, whereas the white Finlandia hall (1971) looks more like a snowy hill. Both the Finlandia and the Essen Opera House (competition 1959, completed 1988) are very much in the Expressionist tradition and seem to celebrate the social event of visiting a theater rather than responding to the functional needs of an opera.

Aalto’s image in crticism does not really reflect his sensitivity to region, nature, or the human being in an abstract sense but rather in the context of critical debates on the lack of regional, natural, and human qualities in international modernism. Thus, in Göran Schildt’s characterization of Aalto as the secret opponent within the Modern movement, the word “within” should be emphasized. Aalto did not undermine the cultural field of modernism but exercised his critique internally. Many of his 1950s buildings, for example, addressed the placelessness of modern architecture, which critics had complained about. His Rautatalo office building (Helsinki, 1955) in particular was singled out by critics as a successful example of contextualism because the brick corner pilasters could be read as minimal markers that indicated respect for the built context, the adjacent brick facade of the bank by Eliel Saarinen, without giving up the modern agenda.

Biography

Contextualism; Corbusier, Le (Jeanneret, CharlesÉdouard) (France); Finland; Helsinki, Finland; International Style; Paimio Sanatorium, near Turku, Finland; Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland; Villa Savoye, Poissy, Franceoffice in Turku (1927–33); private architectural office in Helsinki (1933–76). Appointed visiting professor, Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1940; returned to Finland 1941; returned to United States, Professor, MIT (1946–48); Chairman of the Association of Finnish Architects SAFA (Honorary Member 1943–58); married architect Elissa Mäkiniemi, 1952; Member of the Finnish Academy, 1955 (Emeritus Member since 1968); President of the Finnish Academy, 1963–68; died 11 May 1976 in Helsinki.

Selected Works

Jyväskylä Workers’ Club, Jyväskylä, Finland, 1925

Seinäjoki Civil Guard Building, Jyväskylä, Finland, 1926

Standardized Apartment Building, Turku, Finland, 1928

Defense Corps Building, Jyväskylä, Finland, 1929

Muurame Church, Muurame, Finland, 1929

Turun Sanomat office building, Turku, Finland, 1929

Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Paimio, Finland, 1933

Viipuri Library, Viipuri, Russia, 1935

Finnish Pavilion, World Exhibition in Paris, 1937

Finnish Pavilion, World Exhibition in New York, 1939

Sunila Pulp Mill, Kotka, Finland, 1937

Sunila Housing, Kotka, Finland, 1939

Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland, 1939

Baker Dormitory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1949

Säynätsalo Town Hall, Säynätsalo, Finland, 1952

Muuratsalo Summer (Experimental) House, Muuratsalo, Finland, 1953

Rautatalo Office Building, Helsinki, Finland, 1955

National Pensions Institute office building, Helsinki, Finland, 1957

Hansaviertel House, Berlin, Germany, 1957

Expressionist House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland, 1958

Neue Vahr Apartment building, Bremen, Germany, 1962

Heilig Geist Parish Center, Wolfsburg, Germany, 1962

Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland, 1962

Schönbühl Apartments, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1968

House of Culture, Helsinki, designed
by Alvar Aalto (1952–58)