Viollet le Duc, Ruskin, and Semper

Though similar in some of their beliefs and thoughts, the perspectives of Viollet le Duc, Ruskin, and Semper manifested in very different approaches to style in the 19th Century.

Viollet le Duc approached architecture rationally, studying the designer’s grip on the logic of rational construction. Like Ruskin, he greatly admired Gothic architecture, but for the rational he found behind the design rather than the virtues and aesthetics of the design. In Viollet le Duc’s mind there was a logical process behind the successful result of design—gothic architecture itself was not necessarily rational, but its style was made from ideas a subconscious working on rational parts that led to structure. Le Duc took his analyses and scientific expositions of Gothic architecture and then applied it to his own work. His approach to style and design involved studying the past, reducing it to a process of reason, and then applying it to his own work. This process and Viollet le Duc’s fascination with new materials, specifically ironwork, made him a very forward looking designer—but he did not implement his writings and bold convictions into his built design work.

Ruskin looked at architecture through a more emotional lens. His Seven Lamps of Architecture encapsulated his perception of architecture and design based on principles and morals. These “lamps” included: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, obedience, and memory. In Ruskin’s mind, each of these lamps were to be a guiding light to design, an interesting approach as none of these were quantifiable. His admiration for Gothic architecture lay in his view that architecture was alive with life that the carver gave it. As such, the ornamentation and detail were true architecture (not necessarily the building itself), and naturalism and age were incredibly important. His belief in the holistic composition of elements (specifically, the holistic composition of his “seven lamps”) led him to never truly consider a new style. His strong beliefs in preservation and his view that age, craft, and the monumental made true architecture manifested into Ruskin’s confidence in existing styles as the styles of the modern day.

Semper operated on the conviction that “architecture everywhere borrowed its types from pre-architectural conditions of human settlement.” His approach was somewhat of a combination of Viollet le Duc and Ruskin. He studied architecture and artifacts in the context of ritual rather than aesthetic value from which he then formulated a new scientific design or “practical aesthetic. He looked for the meaning behind the building in order to better understand the processes of how to generate style (specifically in his Der Stil), which he broke down to a mathematical formula: U=C (x, y, z,…).  Semper’s aim was to establish a taxonomy of architectural style and form. He divided the built form into four categories he believed were consistent across time and cultures—heart, substructure or platform, roof, and enclosure. These “four basic elements” existed in every style, but their manifestation was shaped by socio-political and cultural conditions that would create the style of each age.


Sources:

Van Eck, Caroline. (2006). Nineteenth-Century Architecture and Theory: Gottfired Semper and the Problem of Historicism by Mari Hvattum. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 65(1), 136-139. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25068251

Pevsner, N. (n.d.). Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc. Englishness and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture. (pp. 6-43). London: Thames and Hudson London.

Summerson, J. (n.d.). Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Point of View. Heavenly Mansions. (pp. 140-159).