"The
Problem of the House" and "New Uses for Space":
Helion and the Maison Suspendu
A
person's day is made of a certain number of successive acts, enumerated, contiguous,
not combined, contradictory. The day does not flow. It's divided into slices
of successive acts. . . . How do you build a house for that?
Jean Helion, "Termes de Vie, Termes d'Espace," 1934
After the Ismailia Surgery Pavilion, there is apparently a separation in the
Nelson/Nitzchke collaborative effort which will not resume until 1936 and CBS
broadcasting building proposal for New York. In the interim, both would begin
projects that they would personally consider the "most important" of their careers.
Nelson would begin the Maison Suspendu, an architectural exploration into the
nature of human communality and the contradictions of human need. Likewise,
Nitzchke would initiate the Maison de Publicite, a profound project commenting
on the nature of advertising in urban experience, and suggesting new levels
of possible density for an urban program. Though both projects were speculative
in nature (Martial, Nitzchke's client, had by this point disappeared to South
America), they maintained a "buildability" that would make this French variant
of constructivism quite distinct from its more fanciful Russian counterparts.
[13]
In late 1935, Nelson began extensive work on the Maison Suspendu, a theoretical
exploration of the house, the family dwelling. Though Nelson claims that research
for the project had begun in the late twenties, it is most likely that the project
becomes of real interest after Jean Helion's article "Terms of Life, Terms of
Space" is published in Cahier d'Art, which, after lauding Nelson's Ismailia
surgery pavilion goes on to discuss architecture and the problem of the house.
Declaring "all architecture is colored by the problem of the house," he turns
to question "whether the house could be something other than a 'dumb box' in
which to pile up functions and could escape "the euclidian severity" that "mutilates
and paralyzes the spirit." Ultimately the house should develop "in all dimensions,"
"an architecture in every direction, like a piece of sculpture, in which oblique,
vertical, horizontal, and angular cuts are made without arriving at traditional
solutions." [14]
As Joseph Abrams mentions,"it is likely that the Suspended House derives directly
from Helion's analysis of Ismailia," though his thought that "the painter furnished
the architect with a general theoretical framework and spatial ideal" is more
difficult to ascertain. All interviews and "theoretical" articles that Nelson
writes during this period follow the Helion article, and could be colored by
it. Though Nelson and Helion would cultivate a strong friendship in the decades
following the article, it is unclear when the friendship actually began. It
is very likely that their friendship and intellectual dialogue began well before
the article. Nelson's descriptions of his "revolt" from Perret, his conception
of the individual need, appear in a similar language as the Helion article and
were apparently inspired by a book, The Matrix of Man popular in France in the
twenties. Nelson himself sees the Maison Suspendu as a response to Le Corbusier's
published work La Maison, La Machine a Vivre, which the American found shocking
in its fetishizing of the machine: "I was so shocked that I decided to respond
and begin research on the house of the future so as to compare my findings with
those of Corbusier." [15]
After a year studying the history of the house from its origins in the Roman
villa, Nelson apparently "dug into the philosophy of what the house permitted
in the response to the total needs of the development of Man: "So I turned to
my philosopher friends (Helion perhaps) and asked them how does Man develop?"
Nelson's philosophical conclusions are interesting in that they depart from
the collectivist-oriented image of a "post-bourgeois individual" to be found
in most of modern architecture, particularly Corbusier or the German Sachleikeit.
His conception of man is far more nuanced, with an equal respect for individual
privacy and public engagement. What keeps his conception of man from being traditional
is that it posits something of a "non-essentialist" notion of human identity.
Like Helion, who emphasizes the contradictory and disjunctive nature of everyday
life, Nelson defines Man as the "perpetual dialogue" between society at large
and an inner individual privacy. Amid these dialogic scenarios, man develops
along two separate but concurrent lines of individual and collective development:
These two lines of development are never joined nor crossed, they are parallel
. . . The discovery of these principles altared completely my conception of
the house for it should constitute a place into which Man can retreat temporarily,
not permanently. ( Perspecta Interview, 1971)
Unlike many modern architects that envisioned a definitive"New Man," Nelson
posits a more of spectrum of experience, and an inherent contradiction between
public stance and introspection, that as guiding principles send him to specific
architectural solutions.
One consequence of this research is apparently "a new conception for the use
of space." In the design of the suspended house, space is conceived as "the
scene of human regeneration, for rest, study, and leisure." In a 1938 article,
Nelson would call this "non-functional space." The opening up of an intentionally
non-functional space ties back to Helion's belief in an architect's realizing
of unanticipated new needs for growth:
In architecture, as in all the arts, there is a way of following man so as
to ultimately lead him. The comprehension of the immediate and known needs of
Man leads the architect to discover for the Man subsequently other needs which
he himself never suspected did exist ands yet are essential to his growth.
("Termes de Vie,"1934)
The
Maison Suspendu is consciously "composite," composed of two interlocking structures
of different materials and tectonic strategies: one, the so-called "service
group" of compressive concrete and glass block, and the "habitational group,
" a series of metal cabins suspended from a continuous columnar-roof support
of tubular, arc-welded, stainless-steel frames. From the edges of this structure
was hung a diamond-mesh envelope of infilled translucent glass. While the upper
level of the "habitational group" contains the bedroom and bathroom quarters,
suspended beneath this upper level of "living requirements" was a second level
of the library and "pensiorres" connected to the upper tier by a looping, leisurely
ramp.
Spatially,
the project appears unprecedented, even by the Maison de Verre. With the columns
placed beyond the envelope and a suspension structural system employed, Nelson
approximates a "free section" with interior space entirely free of columns and
partitions. A"high concentration of useful space" further serves to "release
space for leisure activity." [16] This
"spatial release" provides for a "freedom of form and volume" and which contrasts
sharply with the restrictions imposed by the traditional cubic room or by the
usual arbitrary division of a "house" into "floors." The "tensile strength"
of steel first lauded by Fuller seven years before this emerges as Nelson's
way of generating a unique experience of space and program, and serve as an
architectural analogue to his concept of the individual and collective. According
to Nelson:
Suspension in space (of the upper level bed and bathrooms) heightens the
sense of isolation from the outside world. . . . Furthermore as one advances
into the uppers of the house, it becomes more and more the realm of the individual
up to the top where the individual nest is suspended, where one finds oneself
alone." (Perspecta Interview, 1971)
Oddly, the Maison Suspendu seems equally derived from Fuller's enthusiasm for
tensile steel and compacted program and the more introspective spatial experience
of the Maison de Verre. Consciously or unconsciously, Nelson seems intent on
inflecting the empirical Dymaxion House with an art-filled, Parisian "existence-maximum"
and rendering an American-styled, mass-producable form to the Chareau masterpiece.
In addition to this, Nelson perpetuates the impacted compression of space and
"vivid functionalism" found in Ismailia. In discussing the work, Nelson says
he intended "a play of functional spaces" evoking a feeling of what Giacometti
called "Legende": "Legende, you move through it, you disappear, you reappear.
. . . a mystery at no given moment could you recognize the whole and yet it
was there at a few strides. .. " [17]
Orthogonal clarity is replaced by an extreme plasticity to the poche, with each
element of the program apparently made supple and forced into tighter proximity
with one another. In plan, the allusions to organic forms appear extremely direct:
the abdomenal confinement of the service group, the embryonic library and thinking
cabins, and the rather obvious "umbilical cord" that ramps from habitation to
thinking quarters.
Whereas the organic metaphor of the embryo for a "pensiorre" is obvious enough,
the contoured, flowing steel roof appears more enigmatic. The structure was
apparently co-designed by Vladimir Bodiansky, a gifted engineer with real knowledge
of steel construction who worked primarily with Marcel Lods and Eugene Baudoin
and began his career as an aviation engineer. In 1941, Nelson would discuss
this as an example of "continuous structure," which is:
...much less abstract, is closer to natural forms than assembled design.
The form follows the continuity of stresses and strains as they occur; the resulting
design discloses the laws of gravity and is therefore closer to forms of nature.
. . . the design of continuous structure is based almost entirely on experimentation.
("My Approach to Architecture," 1941)
He would go on to use the examples of aquaducts by Maillart and developments
in aeroplane design beyond the "assembled bi-plane," as other examples.
Like Helion's simultaneous metaphor of metalic density and the organic found
in "Termes de Vie," this proximity of metal and the biomorphic seems to be in
accord with other articles being published at the time in Cahier d'Art, particularly
R.V. Le Ricolais' article "Vers l'age de l'acier" published the prior year (in
February 1934). In that article, Le Ricolais, an architect from Nantes, eulogizes
the "biological responsiveness" and efficiency that could develop in architecture
from the use of steel:
Metals themselves once considered inert are now considered adapted to the
rules of evolution. Scientifically, one now has to consider metal as capable
of internal reactions, very close to those of a living being. . . . Reactions
ou intervient nonseulement son existence concrete et immediate, mais encore
ses detinees anterieures, autrement dit son heredite. . . . Comment alors ne
pas etre persaude de cette marche naturalle vers une meileurre efficience organique,
vers un"profilage interne" dirige en vue d'une adaptation toujours plus parfaite
au milieu?
(Cahier d'Art, 1934)
[CONTINUE]
"Poisson Soluble":Architecture, Advertising, and the
Maison de la Publicite
zones |