Luis Avilés
THE STANDARDIZATION OF FREEDOM: HISTORY, MEANING, ORNAMENT. 1948-1970

Vox populi: modern architecture is not ornamented. That is what the canonical historiography of modern architecture keeps monotonously repeating. Following Adolf Loos famous public reprobation, from Le Corbusier's L'art decoratif d'aujourd hui to Sigfried Giedion's Bauen in Frankreich, architects and theoreticians distanced themselves from ornamental practices, disdained as superficial, spurious, effeminate, or fashionable. Ornament was unsuited, or better, ill-suited for the development of a modern ethos. Such attitude started to change after the Second World War: an impending rehabilitation of ornament can be detected not only in buildings, but also in contemporary theoretical production, announcing the return of a suppressed feature in the institutionalization of modern architecture.

This dissertation will critically examine the return of ornament in postwar architecture as a result of technological advancements in building industry and fabrication. The main argument is that during the postwar era, the sophistication of industrial modes of production expanded the aesthetic capabilities of architecture by combining rigorous standardization and expressive freedom under the same constructive paradigm. As a result, an aesthetic understanding of mechanization triggered the recuperation of past ornamental forms and the appraisal of geometric patterns.

Such ornamental forms were specifically visible in buildings' exteriority. Postwar façades respond to, and evolve from a particular notion of surface as a form of textile within modern architecture. This morphological recalibration is grounded in disciplinary debates concerning the urge for meaning, the emphasis in historic revivals, and the global dissemination of modern architecture. And yet, it cannot be disentangled from specific social transformations—such as the rise of popular culture as the place of a legitimate intellectual activity, or the growing concerns to redefine man's physical environment. Far from a disadvantage, the cultural and technological milieu freed architects to aesthetically pursue new geometries and ornamental motifs. Industrial and technological improvements found in the disciplinary crisis the perfect background to substantially transform the representational requirements of architecture by the typological model of the double façade. The search for expressive freedom unleashed architecture's semantic capacities stemming from a profound reconsideration of the aesthetic meaning and possibilities of mechanization. The reemergence of ornament in postwar architecture therefore constitutes a prolegomenon for architectural developments during the 1970s and 1980s, and a paramount historical stratum in the archaeology of postmodern architecture.

The first section of this dissertation will analyze the mesmerizing qualities of postwar façades based on the use of geometric patterns. Departing from three postwar buildings by Marcel Breuer—De Bijenkork Department Store (1953-57), the Hunter College (1957-1960), and St. John's Abbey (1957-1960)—, I will examine how the process of standardization and mechanization affected the exterior aspect of buildings. I will also try to understand how a specific form of abstract ornament affected the typologies of façades in the work of architects, designers, and sculptors such as Egon Eiermann, Edward Durell Stone, Erwin Heuer, or Walter Zeischegg.

The second section of the dissertation deals with the reification of history into ornamental forms. Historical revivals tinged the discussion on style in the midst of a disciplinary crisis that took place after the Second World War in the United States, Italy, and England. The hypothesis I want to test is that, unlike previous revivals, the recuperation of historic forms was inevitably linked to new modes of technological production. Mechanizing ornament provided a technological patina to historical recuperations that became specifically conspicuous in the works of BBPR, Gabetti and Isola, Gardella, or Yamasaki. The renovation of modern architecture brought about the historic instrumentalization of ornament.

The third and last aspect I want to consider is the rise of discourses of meaning in postwar architecture as a seminal agent in the return of ornament. Relying mainly in literary and historiographic sources, this section will examine how symbolic aspects impregnated postwar architecture culture and how they became materialized during the 1960s in building practices. Symbolism reemerged as a new discursive category that prompted the identification of architecture with popular industrial culture.

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