Abstraction of

Form & Line

Birth of Modern Architecture
 Why call
Abstraction of Form & Line?
• Based on word – abstract
• Meaning of abstract
-Thought of as quality rather than as an
object or fact.
- Not clear
- Does not try to represent an object as it
would be seen by a camera
• Architectural movement and arts during this
period emphasized on abstraction in achieving
good designs.
• Look at buildings in a new way
What are the architectural
movements?
(1) The Viennese Secession Movement
(a) Josef Maria Olbrich – Secession Building (1898)
(b) Josef Hoffmann - Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1903)
- Palais Stoclet (1905)
(c) Adolf Loos - The Steiner House (1910)
(2) Elementarism
(3) Dutch De Stijl
(a) Gerrit Reitveld - Schroeder House (1924)
(4) Russian Constructivism
(a) Konstantin Melnikov - USSR Pavilion at Paris (1925)
(b) Vladimir Tatlin
 (1) The Viennese
Secession Movement
 The Secession Movement
• Founded in Vienna, Austria in 1897.
• Instrumental in the formation were a group of
artists, such as Otto Wagner and his gifted
students, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Olbrich,
with Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser and others
• As the name indicates, this movement
represented a protest of the younger
generation against the traditional art of their
ancestors.
• Aspired to the Renaissance of the arts and
crafts and to bring more abstract and purer
forms to the designs of buildings and
furniture, glass and metalwork.
• Following the concept of total work of art
• Josef Maria Olbrich as the leader.
• Inspiration from the English Arts and Crafts
Movement and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
through publications.
• Rebellion against the over-florid style of the
French Art Nouveau.
• The Vienna Secession promoted their design
aesthetic with exhibition posters and its own
journal, Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring).
• The journal housed reproductions, poetry
illustrations, graphic art, decorative borders,
object design, and cutting-edge conceptions for
layout.

Otto Wagner, Cover for "Ver Sacrum", 1899

 THE ARCHITECTS;
(a) Josef Maria Olbrich
(b) Josef Hoffman
(c) Adolf Loos
(a) Josef Maria Olbrich
1867 – 1908
The Secession Building (1898 – 1899)
• Joseph Maria Olbrich was an Austrian
architect, co-founder of the Vienna Secession
artistic group.
• In 1897, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, Olbrich,
Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser founded
the Vienna Secession artistic group.
• Olbrich designed their exhibition building, the
famous Secession Hall, which became the
movement's landmark.
• He remains among the World's most respected
and influential architects.
The Secession Building (1898 – 1899)
• First architectural work of the Viennese
‘modernists’.
• It is the headquarters and exhibition centre of the
Viennese Secession Movement.
The Secession Building (1898 – 1899)
The Secession Building (1898 – 1899)
Josef Maria Olbrich
• First architectural work of the Viennese
‘modernists’.
• It is the headquarters and exhibition centre of the
movement.
• Skylighted interior volume framed by geometric
massing of outer walls.
• Historicist allusions plus
non-historicist decorations.
• Symbolism of the ‘tree of life’.
The Secession Building (1898 – 1899)
Josef Maria Olbrich

FRONT VIEW
Back view
Interior image of the original Beethoven Frieze

Interior image of the original main room as

seen from the entrance
Interior image of the original entrance to the main room
(b) Josef Hoffmann
1870 - 1956
(i) Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1903)

(ii) Palais Stoclet (1905 – 1911)

• Most brilliant of Viennese decorative arts
modernist.
• Founder of the Weiner Werkstatte, the Viennese
equivalent of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
• Post Art Nouveau architecture marked by its
excessive cubiform vocabulary.
(i) Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1903)
• Stripped, stuccoed, cubiform box, slightly U-
shaped, opened by simple rectangular windows
and articulated only by a thin cornice.

Front view
Front view
Front elevation
Interior
(ii) Palais Stoclet (1905 – 1911)
• Built as a palatial residence.
• Composed exclusively of a variety of rectilinear forms and
fragments shaped into a complex and picturesque exterior
with a dazzling array of interiors.
• Residence is devoid of any superfluous external
ornamentation.
Palais Stoclet (1905 – 1911)
(c) Adolf Loos
1870 - 1933
The Steiner House, Vienna (1910)
• Secession architect whose aspirations are for
extreme, geometric purism.
• Adolf Loos gained greater notoriety for his writings
than for his buildings:
– Wanted an intelligently established building
method supported by reason.
– Everything that could not be justified on rational
grounds was superfluous and should be
eliminated.
– Recommended pure forms for economy and
effectiveness.
• Loos argued against decoration by:
– Pointing to economic and historical
reasons for its development
– Describing the suppression of decoration
as necessary to the regulation of passion.
• He believed that culture resulted from the
renunciation of passions and that which brings
man to the absence of ornamentation generates
spiritual power.
• Loos attacked contemporary design
– Imitative styling of the nineteenth century.
– Contemporary decoration as mass-produced,
mass-consumed trash.

• Loos acted as a model and a seer for architects

of the 1920s. His fight for freedom from the
decorative styles of the nineteenth century led a
campaign for future architects
The Steiner House, Vienna (1910)
• Much bolder geometry especially the curved roof
rising from the street façade.
• A radical exercise in functionalist geometric
purism.

Garden Elevation
Front Elevation
The Steiner House, Vienna (1910)
• Point of departure from Hoffmann’s Purkersdorf
Sanatorium.
• Much bolder geometry especially the curved roof rising
from the street façade.
• A radical exercise in functionalist geometric purism.

Garden Elevation
Front Elevation
Rear corner view

Interior - ground floor

The Steiner House, Vienna
(1910)
• Point of departure from
Hoffmann’s Purkersdorf
Sanatorium.
• Much bolder geometry
especially the curved roof
rising from the street
façade.
• A radical exercise in
functionalist geometric
purism.

Interior - ground floor

Theoretical Ideas
• Contemporary thought was not against
ornamentation but the unnecessary and
inappropriate use of it.
• Dilemma of new modernists:
– From where and how to create new vocabulary
of ornamentation?
• Loos eliminated ornamentation altogether and
substantiated it in his 1908 essay ‘Ornament and
Crime’- “…the evolution of culture marches with
the elimination of ornaments from useful objects.”
• This statement would lead to the thought
development of the Italian Futurists.
(2) Elementarism
• Art theory expounded by Theo
van Doesburg of the De Stijl
group.
• Elementarism expanded the
limitations of Neoplasticism "Composition with Red, Yellow, and
Blue“ Piet Mondrian
set on artworks by Piet
Mondrian, a leading member
of De Stijl.

"Counter-Composition V, 1924, Theo

van Doesburg
 Neoplasticism
– allowed only the depiction of flat surfaces,
straight lines, and right angles in artworks,
– art should not be the reproduction of real
objects, but the expression of the absolutes
of life.
– To the artists way of thinking, the only
absolutes of life were vertical and horizontal
lines and the primary colours.
– To this end, neoplasticisist only used planar
elements and the colors red, yellow, and
blue.
This neoplastic movement happened in the
1910's
 Elementarism
- believed that the use of inclined planes was
also acceptable, thus making artworks achieve
a 3-dimensional quality.
- applied to painting and architecture to describe
the constructive use of line, plane, volume and
colour not only as the primary means of art but
as an end in itself.
(3) Dutch De Stijl
 GENERAL
• Influential movement in art, architecture, and design
founded in 1917 in the Netherlands.
• The focus of the movement was an attempt to
simplify art to pure abstraction;
• form was reduced to rectangles and other
geometric shapes, while
• colour was limited to the primary colours
and black and white.
• The De Stijl group wanted to bring art and design
together in a single coherent, simplified system.
• Its best-known member was the abstract painter Piet
Mondrian.
• The group's main theorist and publicist was Theo
van Doesburg (1883–1931), and his death in 1931
effectively marked its end.
• The group published a journal, also called De
Stijl (‘The Style’), which ran from 1917 to 1931.
• The movement has also been called
‘neoplasticism’, from a pamphlet of that name
published by the artists in Paris in 1920.
• The leading figures of De Stijl included
a) Piet Mondrian, the painter,
b) Designer, and writer Theo van Doesburg,
c) Architect Jacobus Oud (1890–1963), and the
d) Architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld
(1888–1964).
 MAIN OBJECTIVES
• The De Stijl movement was also known as
Neoplasticism.
• Proponents of De Stijl sought to:
– Express a new Utopian ideal of spiritual
harmony and order.
– Advocate pure abstraction and universality
by a reduction to the essentials of form and
colour —
• they simplified visual compositions to
vertical and the horizontal directions
• used only primary colours of red, blue
and yellow along with black and white.
 EXAMPLES
• Advocate pure abstraction
and universality by a
reduction to the essentials
of form and colour —
• they simplified visual
compositions to vertical
and the horizontal
directions
• used only primary colors
of red, blue and yellow
along with black and Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue 1921.

white. Piet Mondrian.

Examples – Piet Mondrian

Composition No. 10. 1939-42 . Piet Mondrian. New York City 1. Piet Mondrian.
In architecture and art…
• The philosophy was based on functionalism, with a
severe and doctrinaire insistence on the rectilinearity of
the planes, which seem to slide across one another like
sliding panels.

• All surface decoration except color was to be

eliminated, and only pure primary hues, plus black and
white were to be allowed.

• The most important thing about this group was their

ideas, since they managed to build very few of their
designs.

• One important exception is Gerrit Rietveld's Schroeder

House.
Gerrit Rietveld
Gerrit Rietveld
Furniture design
Red, White & Blue Chair (1917)
• It marked the transition between
the organic, curving Art Noveau
Style and the crisp, chic Art Deco.
• The Red & Blue chair is composed
out of a dramatic interplay of
straight lines to form patterns.
• The lines produce form by enclosing
space, the structure has very
simple components and the
striking colors are a reminder of
paintings by the artist Mondrian.
• Although there is no upholstery, the
chair is amazingly comfortable.
Gerrit Rietveld – Furniture design
Red, White & Blue Chair (1917)
Gerrit Rietveld – Furniture design
ZigZag Chair (1934)
• The Red, White & Blue Chair summarizes
kind of the radical proposals of this influential
art and design movement.
• It promoted simple forms and primary colors
and tried to reduce objects to their essential
form.
• The ZigZag is made of four rectangular
sections of natural hardwood, intricately
dovetailed, glued and bolted together that
reveals
• The chair is a pure statement of modernist
seating and expresses the cantilever
principle in a clear form.
• It is spare, austere and reveals a simplicity
in abstraction
Schroeder House,
Utrecht (1924)
• The most complete realization
of the De Stijl aesthetic.
• Not only the house, but also the
furnishings and decoration were
planned by Rietveld.
• The house is a rectilinear
block made up of complex,
interpenetrating planes of
wall, roof, and projecting
decks, with voids filled by glass
in metal sash.
• Its rigorous geometries and
open-plan layout
• articulated with screens and
panels of colour.
• form a new, so called
modernist, aesthetic.
The Interior
• The (upper) main living floor is
divided by a system of sliding
panels that permit
rearrangement to achieve
varying degrees of openness.
• Built-in and movable furniture of
Rietveld's design is geometric
and abstract in concept.
• Only primary colors and black
are introduced within the
generally white and gray tones
of most surfaces.
Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924)
Gerrit Reitveld
• The most complete realization of
the De Stijl aesthetic.
• Not only the house, but also the
furnishings and decoration were
planned by Rietveld.
• The house is a rectilinear block
made up of complex,
interpenetrating planes of wall,
roof, and projecting decks, with
voids filled by glass in metal
sash.
• Its rigorous geometries and
open-plan layout, articulated
with screens and panels of
colour, form a new, so called
modernist, aesthetic.
 Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924)
Gerrit Reitveld

Ground floor First floor

Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924)
Gerrit Reitveld
• The most complete realization of the
de Stijl aesthetic.

North East Elevation

South East Elevation

South West Elevation

Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924)
Gerrit Reitveld
The Interior
• The (upper) main living floor is
divided by a system of sliding
panels that permit rearrangement
to achieve varying degrees of
openness.
• Built-in and movable furniture of
Rietveld's design is geometric and
abstract in concept.
• Only primary colors and black are
introduced within the generally
white and gray tones of most
surfaces.
• Rietveld used the typical Stijl
colors: red, blue and yellow,
combined with white, gray
and black.
• Living area is on the first
floor in a flexible area.
• This is why the various
rooms, with the exception of
the bathroom and the
staircase, are separated
from each other by loose
sliding walls.
• This enabled her to change
the layout of this floor in
accordance with her wishes.
 Dutch De Stijl
Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924)
Gerrit Reitveld
• The Interior
(4) Russian Constructivism
1919 - 1932

Konstruktsiia
The development of the Design
Method
 Russian Constructivism
Konstrukstiia – The Concept
• Has to do with the structure of ideas, with the
construction of arguments through the
assembling sequence of ideas.
• Denotes a mode of thinking, a certain ordering
of the process of thought.
• Mechanical engineering was the basic logical
paradigm of thinking, the same way our age of
information uses system analysis today.
• A scientific theory of the design of form is
possible through the dialectical method of
thinking by the application of mathematical
methods of analysis.
• Constructivism was born out of the 1917 Russian
Revolution – the embodiment of Lenin’s socialist
ideals.
• Origins to be found in post-revolutionary street art
forms such as large scale street art.
• Authorities campaign to cover every available
surface with inflammatory slogans and evocative
iconography.
• By 1920, Inkhuk (the Institute for Artistic Culture)
and Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic Technical Studios)
were founded in Moscow as institutes for the
comprehensive education in art, architecture and
design.
• Before the socialist style of architecture was
formulated, experiments were made in the realms
of art and furniture design
• In particular, they experimented with building up a
sculpture from nothing by adding elements (such as
paper, metal etc) rather than traditional sculptures
which were created by taking away material from a
solid block (of stone, wood etc).
• Gabo and Pevsner wrote the Realistic Manifesto
in 1920.
• Did not agree with the Soviet Constructivists that all
art must be for Marxist political purposes.
• They identified the main formal features of
Constructivist sculpture as:
– planar and linear forms
– dynamic composition
– kinetic elements (time, movement)
– minimisation of mass (space element
emphasised)
– modern materials such as plastic and
electroplated metal.
Constructivist Sculpture
The Architects;
(a) Vladimir Tatlin
(b) El Lissitzky (1890 – 1941)
(c) Konstantin Melnikov
(a) Vladimir Tatlin
• Pioneering artist whose works shows the clear
cubist influence that early constructivists works
exhibited.
• Influence from Picasso, Lipschitz and
Archipenko when he visited Berlin and Paris in
1913.
• Having been inspired, started with collages and
reliefs from metal, wood and Tatlin "Counter Relief (Corner)" 1915

glass becoming one of the

first to truly develop the
constructivist style.
• Painter, sculptor. Passionate
believer in the grand Communist
cause.
• Pioneering works began to blur the
line between architecture and art.
• Designed the "Monument to the
Third International" in 1919-20,
which was supposed to be the
USSR's answer to the Eiffel Tower
- but bigger, better... and
impossible to build so it never
was...
(b) El Lissitzky (1890 – 1941)
• Design produced for a Lenin
Tribune.
• Recognised as un-realisable.
• True expression of the early
Constructivist style.
(c) Konstantin Melnikov
• One of the few constructivist who
saw his designs being realised in
the real world.
USSR Pavilion at Paris – 1925
• Designed for the Paris
Exposition des Arts Decoratifs
Konstantin Melnikov
USSR Pavilion at Paris – 1925
• Designed for the Paris Exposition des
Arts Decoratifs
• It was revered as being “a synthesis of
the more progressive aspects of Soviet
architecture to date…. It recalled not
only the traditional vernacular of the
steppes, but also those exhibition
pavillions which had been designed for
the All Russian Agricultural and Craft
Exhibition of 1923.”
• Interior of the building designed to
display the layout for an ideal worker’s
club.
USSR Pavilion at Paris – 1925
• Designed for the Paris Exposition des
Arts Decoratifs
USSR Pavilion at Paris – 1925
• Designed for the Paris Exposition des
Arts Decoratifs
 Russian Constructivism
Association of Contemporary Architects – 1924
• Formed after 13th Party Congress addressing issues
of poor social housing.
• Josef Ginzburg as leader.
• Tackled issues of communal housing with the
inclusion of other expertise of sociologist and
engineers.
• Housing as “Social Condensers”.
• Failure as failed to develop sufficient concrete
proposals for large scale or evolution of residential
building types which were needed by the socialist
state.
THE END