by Fabrizio Zanni

Inquietudine teorica e strategia progettuale nell’opera di otto architetti contemporanei, Rafael Moneo, Electa, Milano 2005 (pp. 330, € 42,00)

From Stirling to Herzog & de Meuron, Rafael Moneo explores the work and personality of eight influential contemporary architects. With patient critical analysis, he investigates the mix of theoretical anxiety and design strategies characterising each figure. But he also points towards their common tendency to work on architectural projects through a filter of theoretical research. Bernard Tschumi considers the book “an exacting but easy read that unfolds like a novel by Italo Calvino” (from The Architect’s Newspaper).

The author states how “the chosen architects are those who, in my opinion, have had the most influence in schools.” The first is James Stirling. His Brutalist style and typological experimentation at the beginning of his career, his textural focus in the ‘60s, and the linguistic influences of his latest period from the Neue Staatgalerie onward, constitute a kind of “background” as “the most complete register in recent architectural history” upon which to project the work and personalities of the other architects. As for Venturi/Scott Brown, they represent a turning point in the conception of architecture.

The well-known critical essay “Complexities and Contradictions in Architecture” sanctions the need for expressive “freedom” and the contemporary negation of the “puritan morality” of modernity, which as a final result leads to the pastiche of the Sainsbury Wing for London’s National Gallery. With Aldo Rossi and his book The Architecture of the City we return to the search for theoretical fundamentals. In the idea of “type”, Moneo identifies one of the basic nuclei in Rossi’s concept of architecture: “That which is closest to its essence”. He also says that Aldo Rossi’s work shows a kind of dualism that puts the theoretician (a “scientific” way of thinking) in contrast with the builder (dominated by an “imperious expression of sentiment”).

Moneo traces the origins of this separation back to Rossi’s trip to the US in 1976. From Rossi the book jumps, with quite a leap, to Peter Eisenman, who is considered the catalyst of architectural culture over the last 30 years, close to theories by Noam Chomsky. Architecture is considered as a manifestation of language that obeys structural laws. When these laws surpass all apparent and superficial forms, they become hidden in the “profound structure”. In parallel, the “profound structure” bonds with the intellectual adventure of redeeming the authentic spirit of modernity” that was lost in the domination of the functional approach. Moneo attributes the beginning of Eisenman’s functional approach to his contact with Colin Rowe and Leslie Martin at Cambridge.

This is where his well-known studies on Alberti, Scamozzi and Terragni found their origins, as well as the layout of the famous eleven Houses. Moneo states that with Eisenman there is a sanctification of method, and a particular aspect of his complex theory is represented by the diagram concept, the generating nucleus of the architectural form that Eisenman interprets as the decompositional version of the parts of academic composition. The last four chapters are on Álvaro Siza, Frank O. Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron. Siza, the architect of “the unexpected contingent who never forgets the importance of reaching back to the origins of architecture”, receives a thorough examination, ranging from his Wright-inspired background to his sensitivity to the surroundings and the “potentiality” of his buildings “which require completion by those who approach them” (one of the characteristics of his architectural conception).

Gehry is portrayed as a “revolutionary” architect. Moneo takes a meticulous look at all his phases and buildings: his surprising first “cubist” work (Danzinger House, 1964-65); Santa Monica Place (1972-80), where volumetric studies started to “explode” with the use of large-scale graphics; the American Center in Paris (1988-94), where the plastic manipulation of volumes is seen for the first time, finding its apotheosis in the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. Moneo identifies Koolhaas’s project-generating tools as being the “programme” and the concept of “scale”.

“The program me is something that allows the construction of undetermined and open buildings”, writes Moneo in citing the ZKM Centre in Karlsruhe, where “the whole programme is incorporated within a single container measuring 43 x 43 x 58 metres.” (R. Koolhaas).

Herzog & de Meuron’s architecture wraps up the book. Moneo emphasises the importance of the role that construction and attention for materials assumes in this work that is so different from the banal inheritance (if one may call it so) of postmodernism. Moneo affirms: “It is the materials that make the form’s apparition possible.” Their poetry nevertheless evolved from the minimalist Ricola warehouse to the last project mentioned by Moneo, the Kramlich House in Oakville, California, characterized by a steep roof with interwoven curves placed over a rectangular plan. Which brings us back to the title. A bit of “anxiety” even seeps into Swiss architecture sometimes.

Fabrizio Zanni Professor of Architecture at Polytechnic of Milan