The Building as a Machine

The Building as a Machine

            Since the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800’s, the machine has become a part of our everyday lives. It helps us produce goods, power factories and automobiles, and yes, we even live in them. Our built environment is mechanical, the design of which operates to meet the occupants needs just as a machine functions to complete a task like a car engine that utilizes the natural energy in oil to move a car forward. The form of such an engine was designed to power a car as efficiently as possible. The form of an engine’s design is founded in the needs of its functions. This idea forms one of the cornerstones of modern architecture, form follows function. The building’s form is designed as a machine that meets the needs of the clients or occupants. While this idea was solidified with the onset of Modernism and the works of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s beginnings can be linked back to the theories of Viollet Le Duc. From him, the idea has been tested and molded throughout many of the movements that build toward modernism.

            The Industrial Revolution brought on drastic changes in the cultural environment. Two differing perspectives can be seen from the aftermath of the industrial revolution, those who praised the efficiency of the factory and the machine and those who resisted its disastrous effects on the individual craftsman. It’s potential for progress. The first perspectives beginnings can be followed with the spread of Viollet Le Duc’s theories that architecture can be described through rational logic. He sought to explain the evolution of architectural intent as it is related to building form. He brought in the use of new materials from industrial production, like steel to create a different framework in which the building can be designed. His influence was picked up in the Art Nouveau movement at the turn of the century. Like Le  Duc, This movement and particularly Henry Clemens Van de Velde, sought to organize their structures based on its functions and material properties such as the structure. This again, is similar to the functional design of a machine based on its material properties. An engine is built of metal because of the repetitive motion and heat produced. One could not easily build an engine out of wood or concrete.  The continuing rise of industry provided them with new technologies. They experimented further with the use of new, industrially produced materials such as iron. Their materials, while man made, were inspired from natural forms to express the essence of the form itself. Art Nouveau also impacted Adolf Loos’s ideas on the organic expression of materials, that materials should be used to express their nature.

            On the other side, many individuals saw the negative impacts of booming industry. Craft had been taken out of the picture. The Arts and Crafts movement found solace in the hand made. Their focus was on natural materials and craftsman.  William Morris and the Art’s and Crafts movement, while opposed to modern industrialization had a major influence on future movements and architects including the Bauhaus and Walter Gropius whose ideas concerned the reintegration of art  and craft that transformed the design process to allow for mechanization. The Art’s and Craft’s movement was short lived, but it’s influence helped shaped the direction of movements to follow.

            During this same period, a few other notable architects were beginning to formulate ideas that would lead to the building designed as a machine. Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the father of Dutch architecture and similar to the parallel Art Nouveau, structured and constructed works informed by the material usage.  In Vienna, Adolf Loos also contributed to the growing industrial climate in architecture. He was one of the first to reject ornamentation to focus on simplistic forms. Like an engine, based in efficiency, he believed that ornamentation was a waste of resources, money, and time. Both of these architects had a major influence in the transition to Futurism, Expressionism, Destijl, and eventually the Bauhous.

Based on the works of Berlage and Art Nouveau, the Expressionism movement in Amsterdam and thus the Amsterdam School practiced architecture of community, designs that brought focus to the individual part or occupant. They used plans based around the structural layout combining man made (steel) and natural materials giving form to their structure based on the needs and functions of the community. Similarly, the Destijl movement designed architecture for the community but instead saw the machine as a resource for uniform production. The ideas of community and manufactured materials began to take form in the Futurist movement. Like the Destijl, Futurists saw that production and technology could be integrated into the built environment and inform design decisions. Later, Russian Constructivists built on the Futurist influence. They combined ideas from Destijl and the newly opened Bauhaus and experimented with how technology and engineering could be combined to create a built form. Just like as the Industrial Revolution progressed and machines and technology became more efficient, building technologies were being combined with engineering practices to create spaces that functioned as efficiently as the machines produced on an assembly line.

            As all of these movements collaborated ideas throughout the 1920’s, another architect began solidifying his own. Walter Gropius began designing a school that would combine the formulating ideas into a unified example of modernism. The Bauhaus was truly a machine. In order to do so, Gropius took ideas and theories from many of the preceding movements. For example, the school was designed to incorporate the differing functions in the arts. Keeping true to the woes of the Arts and Crafts, he unified art and craft into one school of thought using production as a means to meet the buildings functional and spatial needs. By separating the building skin from its structure, he highlighted materials, showing how the “machine” was put together. Like the Expressionist, he wanted to describe how the function of the spaces informed the structure. He incorporated the Russian Constructivist ideas, abandoning tradition, he created a communal building, one that was self-sufficient, that had all the needs of a community, or a student body in this case. He utilized the means of production, showing how new materials could be incorporated and could be seen as artistic elements rather than obtrusive and ugly elements. Gropius was not the only one who began to combine such new ideas. The 1930’s and 40’s saw a growth of architectural greats such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright  who also build off of the accumulated theories and movements. They truly created buildings based on functional needs. They created machines. Their work and that of many others provided the backbone of a new movement, Modernism, based in the simplicity of form that is founded in the function, in a sense, machines.

The International Style, or Modernism influenced the architectural climate for many years to come. The ideas and theories developed are thought and practiced throughout all contemporary architecture. The idea of the build environment as a machine, pioneered by Modernist in the early 19^th century has become an important concept in so many building that followed, like ----. Today, you can’t take an architectural class without hearing and using the concept of form over function. It is now apart of our architectural language and has become the basis for modern design. Designing for function resembles the design of the machine. Buildings function as machines. They make our lives easier, more economical, and if designed properly more enjoyable.