Architecture parlante
Encyclopedia
The phrase architecture parlante (“speaking architecture”) refers to the concept of buildings that explain their own function or identity.
The phrase was originally associated with Claude Nicolas Ledoux
, and was extended to other Paris-trained architects of the Revolutionary
period, Étienne-Louis Boullée
, and Jean-Jacques Lequeu
. Emil Kaufmann
traced its first use to an anonymous critical essay with Ledoux's work as the subject, written for Magasin Pittoresque in 1852, and entitled "Etudes d'architecture en France". In Ledoux's unbuilt plans for the salt-producing town of Chaux, the hoop-makers' houses are shaped like barrels, the river inspector's house straddles the river, and an enormous brothel takes the shape of an erect phallus.
, have served as examples of architecture parlante. Several orders, usually simply based upon the Composite order and only varying in the design of the capitals, have been invented under the inspiration of specific occasions, but have not been used again. Thus they may be termed "nonce orders" on the analogy of nonce word
s. Robert Adam
's brother James, in Rome in 1762, invented a "British Order" featuring the heraldic lion and unicorn. In 1789 George Dance
invented an Ammonite Order
, a variant of Ionic substituting volutes in the form of fossil
ammonite
s for John Boydell
's Shakespeare Gallery
in Pall Mall, London
. In the United States Benjamin Latrobe
, the architect of the Capitol building
in Washington DC, designed a series of botanically American orders. Most famous is the order substituting corncobs and their husks, which was executed by Giuseppe Franzoni and employed in the small domed Vestibule of the Supreme Court.
building on 44th Street in Manhattan, designed by the team of Warren and Wetmore
. Its three front windows are patterned on the sterns of early Dutch ships, and the façade fairly drips with nautical-themed applied sculpture. The same team designed the 1912 Grand Central Terminal
, which also contains self-explaining architectural elements in the form of the oversized allegorical sculpture
group, and in the ingenious way that the shapes, surfaces, steps, arches, ramps and passageways inherent in the structure constitute a language that helps visitors orient themselves and find their way through the building.
The same year, McKim, Mead & White designed the nearby Farley Post Office Building with its famous inscription adapted from Herodotus: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
The civic architecture of Washington DC provides some of the most poetic and most verbose inscriptions. Beaux-Arts architect Daniel Burnham
is responsible for the Washington Union Station (1908), with its inscription program developed by Harvard president Charles William Eliot
. It includes over the main entrance this paean: "Fire: greatest of discoveries, enabling man to live in various climates, use many foods, and compel the forces of nature to do his work. Electricity: carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea, greatest servant of man, itself unknown. Thou hast put all things under his feet."
building boom in the 1930s, has this extreme example: "The inspiration that guided our forefathers led them to secure above all things the unity of our country. We rest upon government by consent of the governed and the political order of the United States as the expression of a patriotic ideal which welds together all the elements of our national energy promoting the organization that fosters individual initiative. Within this edifice are established agencies that have been created to buttress the life of the people, to clarify their problems and coordinate their resources, seeking to lighten burdens without lessening the responsibility of the citizen. In serving one and all they are dedicated to the purpose of the founders and to the highest hopes of the future with their local administration given to the integrity and welfare of the nation."
Beyond such inscriptions, in the United States the concept of architecture parlante likely reached its zenith in the Nebraska State Capitol
(1922) and the Los Angeles Public Library
(1925), both by architect Bertram Goodhue
and both containing inscriptions by iconographer Hartley Burr Alexander
. With their extensive architectural sculpture programs, tile murals, painted murals, ornamental fixtures and inscriptions (Goodhue worked with a sort of multimedia repertory company of artists, like the sculptor Lee Lawrie
), both of these buildings seem particularly eager to communicate a set of social values.
, its formal rigor and its distaste for ornament of any kind, by 1940 or so architectural parlante was eliminated from the serious architectural vocabulary and found only in commercial and vernacular oddities such as The Brown Derby.
Postmodernism
has seen a revival of these ideas. Terry Farrell
's eggcup-surmounted headquarters for TV-am
in London and the book-shaped towers of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
in Paris, can be seen as examples.
The phrase was originally associated with Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only in domestic architecture but town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian...
, and was extended to other Paris-trained architects of the Revolutionary
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
period, Étienne-Louis Boullée
Étienne-Louis Boullée
Étienne-Louis Boullée was a visionary French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects and is still influential today.- Life :...
, and Jean-Jacques Lequeu
Jean-Jacques Lequeu
Jean-Jacques Lequeu was a French draughtsman and architect.Born in Rouen, he won a scholarship to go to Paris, but following the French revolution his architectural career never took off....
. Emil Kaufmann
Emil Kaufmann
Emil Kaufmann was an Austrian art and architecture historian. He was the son of Max Kaufmann , a businessman, and Friederike Baumwald . Kaufmann is best known for his studies of neo-classicism.-Career:From 1913 he studied at both the University of Innsbruck and the University of Vienna...
traced its first use to an anonymous critical essay with Ledoux's work as the subject, written for Magasin Pittoresque in 1852, and entitled "Etudes d'architecture en France". In Ledoux's unbuilt plans for the salt-producing town of Chaux, the hoop-makers' houses are shaped like barrels, the river inspector's house straddles the river, and an enormous brothel takes the shape of an erect phallus.
Nonce orders
Within more practical applications, nonce orders, invented under the impetus of NeoclassicismNeoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
, have served as examples of architecture parlante. Several orders, usually simply based upon the Composite order and only varying in the design of the capitals, have been invented under the inspiration of specific occasions, but have not been used again. Thus they may be termed "nonce orders" on the analogy of nonce word
Nonce word
A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was formerly a nonce word in English, appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Murray Gell-Mann then adopted it to name a new class of subatomic particle...
s. Robert Adam
Robert Adam
Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...
's brother James, in Rome in 1762, invented a "British Order" featuring the heraldic lion and unicorn. In 1789 George Dance
George Dance the Elder
George Dance the Elder was an English architect of the 18th century. He served as the City of London surveyor and architect from 1735 until his death....
invented an Ammonite Order
Ammonite Order
The Ammonite Order is an architectural order that features fluted columns and capitals with volutes shaped to resemble fossil ammonites. The style was invented by George Dance and first used on John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, London in 1789 .Ammonite motifs were also used on...
, a variant of Ionic substituting volutes in the form of fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
ammonite
Ammonite
Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct subclass within the Molluscan class Cephalopoda which are more closely related to living coleoids Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct...
s for John Boydell
John Boydell
John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...
's Shakespeare Gallery
Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting...
in Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...
. In the United States Benjamin Latrobe
Benjamin Latrobe
Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe was a British-born American neoclassical architect best known for his design of the United States Capitol, along with his work on the Baltimore Basilica, the first Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States...
, the architect of the Capitol building
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
in Washington DC, designed a series of botanically American orders. Most famous is the order substituting corncobs and their husks, which was executed by Giuseppe Franzoni and employed in the small domed Vestibule of the Supreme Court.
Beaux-Arts
The same concept, in the somewhat more restrained form of allegorical sculpture and inscriptions, became one of the hallmarks of Beaux-Arts structures, and thereby filtered through to American civic architecture. One fine example is the 1901 New York Yacht ClubNew York Yacht Club
The New York Yacht Club is a private social club and yacht club based in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1844 by nine prominent sportsmen. The members have contributed to the sport of yachting and yacht design. The organization has over 3,000 members as of 2011. ...
building on 44th Street in Manhattan, designed by the team of Warren and Wetmore
Warren and Wetmore
Warren and Wetmore was an architecture firm in New York City. It was a partnership between Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore , that had one of the most extensive practices of its time and was known for the designing of large hotels.Whitney Warren was a cousin of the Vanderbilts and spent ten...
. Its three front windows are patterned on the sterns of early Dutch ships, and the façade fairly drips with nautical-themed applied sculpture. The same team designed the 1912 Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
, which also contains self-explaining architectural elements in the form of the oversized allegorical sculpture
Allegorical sculpture
Allegorical sculpture refers to sculptures that symbolize and particularly personify abstract ideas as in allegory.Common in the western world, for example, are statues of 'Justice', a female figure traditionally holding scales in one hand, as a symbol of her weighing issues and arguments, and a...
group, and in the ingenious way that the shapes, surfaces, steps, arches, ramps and passageways inherent in the structure constitute a language that helps visitors orient themselves and find their way through the building.
The same year, McKim, Mead & White designed the nearby Farley Post Office Building with its famous inscription adapted from Herodotus: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
The civic architecture of Washington DC provides some of the most poetic and most verbose inscriptions. Beaux-Arts architect Daniel Burnham
Daniel Burnham
Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He took a leading role in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including Chicago and downtown Washington DC...
is responsible for the Washington Union Station (1908), with its inscription program developed by Harvard president Charles William Eliot
Charles William Eliot
Charles William Eliot was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the provincial college into the preeminent American research university...
. It includes over the main entrance this paean: "Fire: greatest of discoveries, enabling man to live in various climates, use many foods, and compel the forces of nature to do his work. Electricity: carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea, greatest servant of man, itself unknown. Thou hast put all things under his feet."
Neo-Classical
The 1932 Commerce Department Building, part of the capital’s neo-ClassicalNeoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
building boom in the 1930s, has this extreme example: "The inspiration that guided our forefathers led them to secure above all things the unity of our country. We rest upon government by consent of the governed and the political order of the United States as the expression of a patriotic ideal which welds together all the elements of our national energy promoting the organization that fosters individual initiative. Within this edifice are established agencies that have been created to buttress the life of the people, to clarify their problems and coordinate their resources, seeking to lighten burdens without lessening the responsibility of the citizen. In serving one and all they are dedicated to the purpose of the founders and to the highest hopes of the future with their local administration given to the integrity and welfare of the nation."
Beyond such inscriptions, in the United States the concept of architecture parlante likely reached its zenith in the Nebraska State Capitol
Nebraska State Capitol
The Nebraska State Capitol, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the house of the Nebraska Legislature and houses other offices of the government of the U.S. state of Nebraska....
(1922) and the Los Angeles Public Library
Los Angeles Public Library
The Los Angeles Public Library system serves the residents of Los Angeles, California, United States. With over 6 million volumes, LAPL is one of the largest publicly funded library systems in the world. The system is overseen by a Board of Library Commissioners with five members appointed by the...
(1925), both by architect Bertram Goodhue
Bertram Goodhue
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was a American architect celebrated for his work in neo-gothic design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press.-Early career:...
and both containing inscriptions by iconographer Hartley Burr Alexander
Hartley Burr Alexander
Hartley Burr Alexander, Ph.D American philosopher, writer, educator, scholar, poet, and iconographer born Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 9, 1873.-Family and early years:...
. With their extensive architectural sculpture programs, tile murals, painted murals, ornamental fixtures and inscriptions (Goodhue worked with a sort of multimedia repertory company of artists, like the sculptor Lee Lawrie
Lee Lawrie
Lee Oscar Lawrie was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II...
), both of these buildings seem particularly eager to communicate a set of social values.
Modernism
With the advent of ModernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, its formal rigor and its distaste for ornament of any kind, by 1940 or so architectural parlante was eliminated from the serious architectural vocabulary and found only in commercial and vernacular oddities such as The Brown Derby.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
has seen a revival of these ideas. Terry Farrell
Terry Farrell (architect)
Sir Terry Farrell, CBE, RIBA, FRSA, FCSD, MRTPI is a British architect.-Life and career:Farrell was born in Sale, Cheshire. As a youth he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he attended St Cuthbert's High School. He graduated with a degree from Newcastle University, followed by a Masters in urban...
's eggcup-surmounted headquarters for TV-am
TV-am
TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast to the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 to 31 December 1992. It made history by being the first national operator of a commercial television franchise at breakfast-time , and broadcast every day of the week for most or all of the period...
in London and the book-shaped towers of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
in Paris, can be seen as examples.