Teori dan Sejarah Arsitektur

Febri Nurhidayat
M. Muqbil Maulana
Nisa Nabila
Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (10 December 1870 –
23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czech architect
and influential European theorist of modern architecture.
His essay Ornament and Crime advocated smooth and
clear surfaces in contrast to the lavish decorations of the
fin de siècle, as well as the more modern aesthetic
principles of the Vienna Secession, exemplified in his
design of Looshaus, Vienna.
BUILDING MATERIALS (1898)
Building Materials
What is worth more, a kilo of stone or a kilo of gold?
The question is probably ludicrous. But only for the
businessman. The great artist will answer: for me all
materials are equally valuable.
Building Materials
The artist has only one ambition: to master the
material in a way that makes his work independent of
the value of the raw material.

But our architects don't know this ambition. For them,

a square metre of granite façade is more valuable
than if it were concrete.
Building Materials
This was not always the case. In the old days
building was done with materials that were most
easily accessible to anyone.
Building Materials
“But in our own times it is not the artist who rules, but
the day labourer; not creative thought, but working
time. And mastery is also being progressively twisted
from the hands of the day labourer, because
someone has turned up who can produce the
quantitative performance better and more cheaply:
the machine.”
Building Materials
But all working time, whether accomplished by
machine or coolie, costs money. But what if one has
no money? Then one begins to fake work- ing time, to
imitate material.

Over the past few decades imitation has dominated

the whole of architecture.
Looshaus, Vienna
ORNAMENT AND CRIME (1908)
Ornament and Crime
“Ornament does not enhance my joy in life, nor does
it that of any cultured person. If I want to eat a piece
of gingerbread, I choose a piece that is quite smooth,
not a piece depicting a heart or a babe in swaddling
or a knight covered from head to toe in ornaments.”
Ornament and Crime
“Ornament means squandered manpower and thus
squandered health. It has always been so. But today it
also means squandered material and both together mean
squandered capital.”

As the ornament is no longer organically connected with

our culture, ornament is no longer the expression of our
culture.
Villa of Viktor Bauer, Hrušovany Villa Müller, Prague
EPILOGUE CRITIQUE OF ORNAMENT
Joseph Masheck
THE SEVEN LAMPS OF
ARCHITECTURE
In 1849 John Ruskin published an article called The
Seven Lamps of Architecture. In this he distills the
essence of the Gothic Revival down to seven lamps.

The 19th century Gothic Revival period of architectural

design in England, better known as Victorian Gothic,
was in large part due to the writings of John Ruskin.

His passionate writings heralded the Gothic Revival

movement in Britain. John Ruskin opposed
industrialization and rejected the use of machine-made
materials.
THE 7 LAMPS
1. Lamp of Sacrifice
2. Lamp of Truth
3. Lamp of Power
4. Lamp of Beauty
5. Lamp of Life
6. Lamp of Memory
7. Lamp of Obedience
LAMP OF BEAUTY
“the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters: the one, the
impression it receives from human power; the other; the image it bears to the
natural creation...all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are
commonest in the external creation”

Mankind feeling of beauty is presumed universal and instinctive.

The resemblance to natural work as made by God, as a type and help, must be
more closely attempted, man cannot advance in the invention of beauty, without
directly imitating natural form
BEAUTY IN ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT
“Thus, in the Doric temple the triglyph and cornice are
unimitative; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of
wood. No one would call these members beautiful…
All the beauty it had was dependent on the precision
of its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent
occurrence”

Beauty is instantly felt in it, but of a low order. The

decoration proper was sought in the true forms of
organic life, and those chiefly human.
Ionic temples like the Doric depends on the
abstraction of natural forms for its
expression of beauty, but showing more
imitation to the natural forms in the form of
vegetation and plants

“perfection, in its place and way, has never

been surpassed”
In gothic style architecture, John said
that we see the beauty in pointed arch
because we have already seen it from
the shape of leaf
“I would fain be allowed to assume also the converse of this, namely, that forms which
are not taken from natural objects must be ugly. forms are not beautiful because
they are copied from nature; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty
without her aid.”

Greek Fret is ugly because it

has no precedent to allege for
its arrangement except an
artificial form of a rare metal
Ornament Arrangements
Garlands and Festoons of flowers as an architectural
decoration, for unnatural arrangements are just as
ugly as unnatural forms
So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the whole
value of the flower work is lost. It adds no
delightfulness to the edifice.

Corinthian capital is beautiful, because it expands

under the abacus just as Nature would have
expanded it; and because it looks as if the leaves had
one root
Ornament Arrangements
Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one principal thing and several inferior
things, and bind them well together. the varieties of arrangement are infinite.

Have not beasts four legs?

Yes, but legs of different
shapes, and with a head
between them. So they have a
pair of ears: but not at both
ends.

King’s College Chapel with 4 towers in each corner

Using same size and shape in each tower
Colors in Architectural Ornament
That sculpture is the representation of an idea,
while architecture is itself a real thing. The idea
may, as I think, be left colorless, and colored by
the beholder's mind: but a reality ought to have
reality in all its attributes: its color should be
as fixed as its form.
“I think the colors of architecture should be
those of natural stones; partly because more
durable, but also because more perfect and
graceful.”

Balcony in the Campo, Venice

Visible independent of form

The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of

its body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard.

“Never paint a column with vertical lines, but

always cross it.”

“Color, to be perfect, must have a soft outline

or a simple one: it cannot have a refined one;
and you will never produce a good painted
window with good figure-drawing in it.”
 LAMP OF OBEDIENCE

Obedience--principle to which Polity owes its

Stability, Life its Happiness, Faith its Acceptance,
Creation its Continuance
Freedom and Expression
● There is no such thing as liberty in the universe. There can never be. The
stars have it not, the earth has it not, the sea has it not. If there be any one
principle more widely then another confessed by every utterance, or more strenly
than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle is not
liberty but Law.

● Obedience is indeed, founded on kind of freedom, else it would become mere

subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect.
• originality in expression does not depend on invention of new words.
Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will take up
any style that is going, the style of his day, and will work in that, and be great in
that, and make everything that he does in it look as fresh as if every thought of it
had just come down from heaven.
• There was also an autonomy that was being sought for, the freedom for the
architect as an artist to pursue his art. He opens his essay by maintaining that
architecture is, "the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History and Religious
Faith of nations”. He goes on to stress this exalting social dimension of
architecture indicating that it, "requires for its practice the cooperation of
bodies of men", and also that is extends a, "continual influence over the
emotions of daily life." Added to this is the temporal dimension, architecture
having the potential to affect the individual and collective life of families and
peoples over many successive generations.
Style as Linguistic Analogy

• architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as

its language and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so
many dialects.

• architect should content itself with the customs, which have been enough for the
support and guidance of other arts before it an like it.
• When we begin to teach children writing, we force them to absolute copyism,
and require absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain
command of the received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their
falling into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their circumstances,
or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to write Latin, an authority is
required of him for every expression he uses; as he becomes master of the
language he may take a license, and feel his right to do so without any authority.
• In the same way our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted
style. We must first determine what buildings are to be considered; their modes of
construction and laws of proportion are to be studied with the most penetrating
care; then the different forms and uses of their decorations are to be classed and
catalogued.
Referensi
Ornament and Crime, Adolf Loos

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looshaus

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Loos

The Seven Lamps of Architecture, John Ruskin