"The outside Is the Result of an inside": Some Sources of One of Modernism's Most

Persistent Doctrines
Author(s): Thomas L. Schumacher
Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 56, No. 1 (Sep., 2002), pp. 22-33
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
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THOMAS L. CHUMACHER "The Outside Is the Result

University of Maryland

of an Inside"
Some Sources of One of Modernism's
Most Persistent Doctrines

One of the most pervasive doctrines of composition for modernism was the necessary correspondence between the interior and the exterior as expressed in Le Corbusier's maxim, "The outside is the
result of an inside." Many Modern movement architects interpreted this maxim as requiring that both
"space" and "program" be expressed on the exterior of their buildings. Although Modern movement
architects and theorists themselves wrote little on this subject, a number of earlier writings, including

some nineteenth- and twentieth-century books by traditionalists, reveal the academic roots of these
precepts. This paper traces the development of these ideas.
Introduction

"A building is like a soap bubble.... The

outside is the result of an inside."
Le Corbusier'

"Architecture has always been essentially an

abstract art.. ."

activity purpose of a building, is distinguishable

from function as the fulfillment of environmental
and comfort requirements (with which I am not

rooms on its front facade doesn't necessarily make

concerned in the present essay), which in turn

this building any more expressive of "courthouse"

should be distinguished from functions (plural), that

than the U.S. Supreme Court, where the portico

is, the specific programmed elements of the

stands for the institution (and the chamber) as an

building, the rooms and spaces of the interior.

architectural synecdoche. However it is accomplished, the signal of activity function is assumed by

Henry-Russell Hitchcock2

Ask an architecture student today to account for

some variation in the fenestration of an otherwise

repetitive facade of even a Renaissance building,

and the answer will most likely be that the architect

was trying to project some aspect of interior space

onto the outside wall. The idea that interior-exterior

correspondences should be the standard expectation

of facade appearance is a widespread assumption in
contemporary architecture schools, and it is difficult

to contest as the only norm of architectural expression.

In much of the architecture of the Modern

"courtroom." Simply because Le Corbusier's High

Court in Chandigarh, India, parades all its court-

The Importance of the Program

The exterior of a courthouse may telegraph a
number of different messages, ranging from the

idea that the building is a courthouse and not a

post office, to the indication of an important
chamber, to the fact that the building is a public
institution, to the importance of the building in its
community, and so forth. The means by which and

the degree to which each of these attributes can be

contemporary architects to be the preferred initial

reading upon encountering a building.

These modern assumptions about what a

courthouse or any other building should announce
to the casual observer were not always the norm.
Among the romantics of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, the idea that a building
might be Hungarian, French, or English was far
more important than whether it was a library, a

town hall, or a mansion. Goethe, for example, glori-

articulated vary enormously from place to place and

fied the "German-ness" of German architecture,

time to time. Courthouse may be plainly indicated

arguing,

by an inscription over the door, a sign out front, or

by the Corinthian portico flashed behind a TV news-

And now I should not be angry ... when the

movement, two important assumptions were tacitly

made about the inside and the outside. One was

caster to indicate the United States Supreme Court.

German art scholar, upon the hearsay of

that a building's social program ought to be read

An important courtroom may be placed on the

jealous neighbors, does not appreciate his

quite literally on the outside of the building,

facade as a volume or it may be displayed via

superiority, belittles your work with the misun-

without the aid of inscription. The other assumption

enlarged windows or even via a blank windowless

derstood word "Gothic," when he should thank

was that the interior spaces and volumes ought to

be read as well. These ideas are interconnected and

wall. The same Corinthian portico we see behind

God to be able to proclaim aloud that that is

the newsreader may denote the existence of the

German Architecture, our architecture, when

often become conflated in practice. Function, taken

here to mean the institutional identification or social

chamber. That is, if the portico successfully

the Italian can boast of none of his own, much

less the Frenchman.3

projects "courthouse" then it must also project

23 SCHUMACHER Journal of Architectural Education,

pp. 23-33 ? 2002 ACSA, Inc.

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Sir John Summerson claimed that interest in

program was the single common denominator of

teristic of the progressive architecture of the early

formed."" This led to a classification of buildings by

twentieth century that it was conceived in terms of

social, not formal or constructive, criteria. Semper

theoretical assumptions within the Modern move-

a separate and defined volume for each separate

divided architecture into four independent elements:

ment in architecture. In a seminal article in the RIBA

and defined function, and composed in such a way

the hearth, the platform, the roof (including the

Journal in the late 1950s, he summarized that,

that this separation and definition was made plain."6

"the source of unity in Modern Architecture is in the

Robert Venturi has also argued that, in much

vertical structure), and the enclosure ("infill"). He

wrote,

social sphere, in other words in the architect's

of twentieth-century architecture, "program func-

program."4 Summerson further argued,

tions are exaggeratedly articulated into wings or

The first sign of human settlement . . . is

segregated separate pavilions."7 The gradual substi-

today, as when the first men lost paradise, the

From the antique (a world of form) to the

tution of such programmatic expression for tectonic

setting up of the fireplace and the lighting of

program (a local fragment of social pattern);

expression has many determinants during this

the reviving, warming, and food-preparing

this suggests a swing in the architect's psycho-

period, one of them being the architect's gradual

flame. Around the hearth the first groups

logical orientation almost too violent to be

estrangement from the engineer and the artist,

assembled; around it the first alliance formed;

credible. Yet in theory at least, it has come

starting in the middle of the eighteenth century."

around it the first rude religious concepts were

about; and how it has come about could very

Partially removed from the technical expertise of

put into the customs of a cult. Throughout all

well be demonstrated historically. First the

the engineer and the aestheticism of the painter

rationalist attack on the authority of the

and sculptor, the late-eighteenth-century architect

phases of society the hearth formed that

sacred focus around which the whole took

antique; then the displacement of the classical

was drawn toward the social sciences, to the idea

order and shape.12

antique by the mediaeval; then the introduc-

that architecture could be the independent variable

tion into mediaevalist authority of purely social

upon which behavior depended. Myths about the

factors (Ruskin); then the evaluation of purely

vernacular architectures because of their social

origins of architecture began to change. Architec-

Semper's forms. He continues, "it is the first and

ture was now seen as emanating from a social, not

most important, the moral element of architecture

The hearth is the first and most elemental of

realism (Morris); and finally the concentration

of interest on the social factors themselves and

a constructive, source.

the conception of the architect's program as

social realm in a cursory comparison of two decisive

the source of unity - the source not precisely

of forms but of adumbrations of forms of

theorists: Marc-Antoine Laugier, writing in 1753,9

In this regard, Semper was following Vitruvius, who

and Gottfried Semper, writing one hundred years

averred, "the beginning of association among

We can see the increasing importance of the

[his italics]."" As Rosemarie Bletter explained, "the

fire [is] an element without spatial dimension but

one that bestows social significance on the site."14

undeniable validity. The program as the source

later.10 Laugier conceived an almost wholly

human beings, their meeting and living together...

of unity is, so far as I can see, the one new

constructive rationale for the origins of architecture.

came into being because of the discovery of

He assumed that the programmatic need for shelter

fire."15

principle involved in modern architecture.5

was important, but generalized. For him, the manipThe route to an architecture that seeks to

Further, Semper's "roof, with its supporting

ulation of the primary elements to make that

member is read as a continuous unit," 6 thereby

express program function (and interior volume) was

shelter-that is, the column and the architrave-

amalgamating two of the most discrete elements

a slow one throughout the nineteenth century,

is the initial act of man behaving like an architect.

of all previous systems (including Laugier's): the

column and the architrave. He also made a clear

culminating in such canonical International Style

Semper wrote his treatise after the intervention

buildings as Gropius's Bauhaus in Dessau. Reyner

of the seminal social ideas of the Enlightenment

Banham characterized buildings like the Bauhaus as

and their application to architecture by Ledoux,

separation of structure and enclosure, arguing that

the earliest of human habitations were frame

typical of the design process that was common to

Fourier, Bentham, and others. Semper was also

constructions with woven carpets as vertical spatial

most avant-garde architects in the 1920s. Banham

strongly influenced by the work of biologist Georges

separators. "Only the potter's art," Semper argued,

traced the origins of this idea specifically to the

Cuvier, whose scientific innovation "was to shift

"can with some justification perhaps claim to be as

unacknowledged influence of the great academician

Julien Guadet's theories on modernist architects,

emphasis from description by the identifiable

ancient as the craft of carpet weaving [his italics]."17

members of an organism, and classification by

Semper conceived the facade as, "a partition wall

adding, that "it may be taken as a general charac-

description, to classification by the function per-

made with hands, the first vertical division of space

"The Outside Is the Result of an Inside" 24

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invented by man."18 Wall as divider precedes wall as

reflected in similar shape; different functions in

support in Semper's system. Although this is not to

different shapes."21

one's attention from true architectural values: the

relations of wall to window, solid to void, volume to

space, block to block."24

say that Semper was unconcerned with structure

and construction, the ideas limned above are a

Abstraction and Volumetric

precursor to the separation of structure and enclo-

Expression

This premium on abstraction, confirmed by

Hitchcock's statement that covers this essay, was

wedded to the idea that the inside should be

sure that became the plan libre of Le Corbusier and

The New Architecture has ... made "front"

Mies, wherein the facade surface was not its own

and "back," "right" and "left," and possibly

projected to the outside. H.R. Hitchcock and Philip

structure. And, without that structural and construc-

also "above" and "below" equal in value.

Johnson portrayed this shift in expressive possibili-

tive essence, walls could become, in the words of

Theo van Doesburg22

ties as the difference between the expression of

mass and the expression of volume.25

Van Doesburg, "colour planes [which] form an

Le Corbusier's "soap bubble" metaphor gave

organic part of the new architecture."19 In other

The programmatic message that a building projects

words, for Van Doesburg and his generation, the

to the outside world is one issue. Another important

architects the paradigm. Since the 1920s, many

issue is what the building projects of its internal

avant-garde architects have taken this prescription

planes are abstract.

spaces. Along with program having been conceived

rather literally, and they could assume it to be oper-

most lasting structural conventions -that is, the

clear distinction of vertical from horizontal members

as an independent variable in the design equation,

ative for repetitive as well as hierarchical buildings;

so "space" and "volume" have been "liberated"

a repetitive facade must necessarily project a repeti-

(column and architrave) - is an important step on

from structure and construction. This independence

tive interior, otherwise "something is being hidden."

the road to abstraction. Further, his insistence on

has changed the way in which architects approach

And, although an adherence to the rigors of

the anthropological setting as the architectural

plan organization (so-called free plan), the making

construction exigencies and budgets often may

prime determinant indicates that architects could

of rooms (so-called free-flowing space), the expres-

conflict with an equally rigorous display of internal

now see "program" alongside "structure" as a

sion of purpose (program function versus national

volume or function (as when a neutral curtain-wall

significant generator of architectural form and

surface.

and regional traits), and the design of the exterior

facade of repetitive structure covers a spatially hier-

surface (so-called free-facade).

archical interior), some modern architects have

Semper's destruction of one of architecture's

Directives regarding the connection of activity

In the 1920s, with the advent of the Interna-

succeeded in expressing both gradation and concat-

program and facade appear in the literature at least

tional Style, the abstract white stucco and glass

as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

facade emerged, profoundly influenced by modern

enation. Louis I. Kahn's Exeter Library is a building

that, through its massing and fenestration, reveals

Richard Etlin has uncovered how, according to the

painting. Peter Collins traced the influence of

its importance without literally telegraphing its great

French Conseil des Batiments Civil (1805), "each

painting and abstraction on the architects of the

internal space. The building's rigorous repetition of

building had to announce on its exterior the char-

early twentieth century. He argued that Gropius's

structural bays preserves the traditional conventions

acter [corresponding to] its function."20 I have

students at the Bauhaus, "were initiated into the

of masonry construction without resembling a banal

added Semper to Summerson's example of Ruskin

study of architecture by manipulating abstract

office building.

as the agent of the "social program" determinant,

shapes without any reference to building functions

which by the early twentieth century was to begin

or the ultimate strength of materials, but solely with

the inside should appear on the exterior surface,

to have a profound effect on architects' attitudes

a view to achieving ornamental appeal in terms of

yet, among even the moderates among International

about form making.

That such ideas have been codified into the

'significant form.""23 This abstraction appeared in

Style modernists, few would have allowed that the

the architecture of Adolf Loos around 1910, and

outside surface ought to determine interior distribu-

Architects may disagree on "which what" of

literature of late-twentieth-century theory is

was then further developed by Le Corbusier, the

tion. It's one thing to not project all the innards

attested by Rudolf Arnheim's argument in his influ-

Bauhaus, the Dutch, and the Russians in the 1910s

onto the outer wall; it's quite another for the

ential book, The Dynamics of Architectural Form:

and 1920s. Writing just after World War II, Nikolas

"The simple principle to which all this comes down

Pevsner observed the new abstraction in Gropius

outside wall to dictate, or even precede, the interior.

The Place Vendome and Haussmann's boulevards in

is that in a well-designed building there is a struc-

and Meyer's Faguswerke factory and the Werkbund

Paris, where the facades were built before the

tural correspondence between visual properties and

functional characteristics. Similar function should be

Administration, both built just before World War I:

buildings, are often the object of modern architects'

"No moldings, no frills, were permitted to distract

indignation and disdain, as if it were patently

25 SCHUMACHER

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": "i: ~?1r.1. Peruzzi,

Palazzo Massimo, 1525, plan at upper floor (from
',h
Letarouilly).

"I

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"1_

obvious that such an act is immoral and inauthentic,

buildings exuding the value of "truth" expounded

nonhierarchical in terms of the spaces behind, not

despite the fact that these projects are brilliant

by Ruskin. In the late 1950s, Le Corbusier wrote an

unlike a modern office building. But repetitive

urban gestures.

introduction to a photo essay on the Cistercian

facades also show up in buildings whose internal

Monastery of Le Thoronet in southern France. The

book was entitled The Architecture of Truth.

spatial hierarchies are more pronounced. The

century) are buildings whose facades rather deftly

the space it faced, be it street or square, whether or

In addition to a penchant for plain walls and

the use of the same material on the inside as on the

not the facades were built first. Giulio Carlo Argan

outside (and presumably all the way through), many

discrepancies between internal void and the exterior

wall. The facade of the Palazzo Farnese veils the

In most premodern architecture, the more

important the building, the less the facade related

to the rooms it covered and the more it related to

Farnese and Massimo palaces in Rome (sixteenth

hide what a modern sensibility interprets as spatial

maintained that in the Renaissance, as in antiquity,

modern architects have come to appreciate those

the most important and grandest facades displayed

an architectural form that, "was not that of the

historical examples where the interior volume relates

to the outside wall, where the spaces are

solid volume whose facades suggested [the] internal

structure, but a cubic void whose facades are the

"projected" onto the facade. Venetian palaces have

Peruzzi had to choose between centering the grand

often been favorite examples for professors of

room on the facade or on the courtyard; the two

enclosing walls."26 Further, the greater the number

design. This facade type seems to so perfectly

do not line up. He opted for the courtyard (Figure 1 ),

of equal (and large) windows a Renaissance client

mirror the parti, with its central room, the portego,

a relationship that was more immediate because it

could afford for his palazzo, the happier he was.

typically faced with an open loggia. But it is unlikely

was made perceptible via the promenade of the

double-volume grand Salone at the upper left of

the facade. For his Palazzo Massimo, Baldassare

Irregularity, to quattrocento and cinquecento clients

that projecting the plan and section onto the

building. Also, some of the windows on the first

(whatever its origins), symbolized the unkempt

facade was an important intention of the patrons

attic floor light and ventilate the upper reaches of

or architects of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the baroque. If anything, many of those

the grand salone, while others light smaller rooms

above. Architects and architecture students who

past, the "orthodox modernist" (Robert Venturi's

facades illustrate the struggle to suppress such a

study the drawings of this masterpiece are the only

term) takes great delight in discovering inside-

reading.27

squalor of the Middle Ages.

Further, when observing architecture of the

outside relationships that appear to prevision

The repetition of similar bays is common in

ancient, Renaissance, and Post-Renaissance public

modernism. Vernacular buildings, ancient ruins

stripped of their revetments, and doggedly plain

buildings. Some of those buildings are in fact deep,

buildings like Cistercian abbeys are often cited as

porch-like structures, and some are also relatively

persons who are ever aware of any inconsistency of

internal-external alignment. They are also the only
ones who care.

In these two palaces, the tension between the

inside and the outside poses a dilemma for the

"The Outside Is the Result of an Inside" 26

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modernist architect. Confronted with a similar situa-

about it. Van Doesburg seemed to have parroted Le

"on first examination this space appears to be an

tion deriving from contemporary functional

Corbusier's dictum verbatim in his lectures: "The

distribution, the modernist would most often allow

interior ought to determine the shape of the exte-

almost flat contradiction of the facade; particularly

on the principal floor, the volume revealed is almost

the inside to determine the outside.

rior."32 Le Corbusier himself sent out conflicting

directly opposite to that which we might have antic-

signals. In Towards a New Architecture, he first

states that "mass and surface are determined by the

ipated. Thus the glazing of the garden facade might

have suggested the presence of a single large room

century English architects and theorists began to

plan. The plan is the generator."33 Later he argues

behind it."35

promote the idea that interior volume should make

that "a mass is enveloped in its surface, a surface

its way out to the facade and the massing of a

which is divided up according to the directing and

were, that led Rowe and Slutzky to their conclu-

building. George Hersey sketched this development

generating lines of the mass; and this gives the

sions. "First examination" is what critics would have

in his book, High Victorian Gothic, coining the

mass its individuality."34

seen in the 1950s (when the article was written) -

Such aesthetic predilections do not originate

with the International Style, however. Nineteenth-

Program and space have yet another dimension

phrase, Automatic Functional Picturesque to

describe the theory of E.B. Lamb, who argued, "by

in relation to facade design, and a comparison

Of course, it is the "second examination," as it

that is, an interior projected onto the facade. In

other words, Rowe and Slutzky were tacitly criti-

their size and importance, and the situation and

between two projects by Le Corbusier may serve to

cizing the assumption concerning inside-outside

decoration of the windows and doors, the principal

relationships.

rooms will sufficiently indicate their uses."28 Hersey

further elucidate the relationship of program as

interior volume to the exterior surface. In the Ozen-

further expanded the idea by examining the work of

fant Studio of 1923, the street facades display the

and early eighteenth centuries - like Peruzzi before

William White, noting White's, "emphasis on func-

internal spaces fairly explicitly. The studio at the top

tional expression through volumes rather than

of the house is covered by a huge window wall, and

them - did not see fit to express what they would

have considered the banalities of individual rooms

facade details."29 But perhaps Hersey's most telling

smaller-scaled ribbon windows cover the rooms

on the exteriors of their buildings. Rather, they

example is that of G.E. Street, the famous Victorian

below. Le Corbusier could justify his giant window

resolved a regularized repetitive exterior to an inte-

architect and theorist. Hersey quotes Street in this

as required to properly light a painting studio, but

rior of great variations in room size, scale, and

regard twice, first in a diatribe against a particular

the spatial expression is also purposeful.

On both the front and rear facades of Le

proportion. Post-Renaissance social life, both aristo-

building in Oxford, where, "from the exterior it is

difficult if not impossible to obtain an idea of what

Corbusier's Villa Stein at Garches, no such tele-

complex than that of the Renaissance, and room

By contrast, the architects of the seventeenth

cratic and bourgeois, was ever so much more

the interior arrangement is, or what may be the

graphing of internal volume occurs. The ribbon

shapes, sizes, and functions began to proliferate in

object of the building."30 Later in his career, in his

windows that spread out across the front of the

the seventeenth century.36 By the end of the seven-

Royal Academy lectures of 1881, Street amplified

this sentiment: "The construction of the exterior

piano nobile are the same as those of the less

teenth century, the arrangement of space for

increasingly specific uses (the art of distribution in

should, as far as possible, show the arrangement of

important bedroom floor above; the kitchen on the

left receives the same window treatment as the

the interior, and you ought at once to know some-

library in the center and the stair hall on the right.

as a primary activity in the architectural design

thing about the positions of the floors, the shape of

the roofs, and the sizes and uses of the principal

The double height of the entry hall is unexpressed.

The facade of the Villa Stein at Garches is unmis-

practice of J.F. Blondel, an architect at the forefront

of the development of modern distribution and hier-

French) was beginning to catch up with composition

process.37 We see this process in the theories and

rooms, merely by examining the exterior of the

takably telling us something very different about its

building."31

internal contents from the Ozenfant Studio; it refers

archy in the plan. To Blondel (see Figure 2), the

Coming from a Gothic Revival architect, this

sentiment sounds almost anachronistic to the

back, via its facade parti if not its style, to the

facade did not express this hierarchy directly or

tradition of the piano nobile houses of the Italian

volumetrically, but rather through scale and regu-

twenty-first-century observer, as it very closely

Renaissance and the French baroque. Colin Rowe

larity. As Richard Etlin has explained,

resembles the instruction given architecture

and Robert Slutzky, in their seminal essay, "Trans-

students by teachers steeped in the theories of

parency, Literal and Phenomenal," commented on

this condition at the Villa Stein at Garches.

of organization which had to be coordinated

contemporary academic design studios often follow

Describing the space behind the rear facade (a

together at the same time that each satisfied

such prescriptions, few modernist masters wrote

condition similar to that in the front), they write,

different and sometimes opposing

Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. However, although

Blondel had to manipulate two distinct systems

27 SCHUMACHER

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2. J.F. Blondel, Country House, 1737-1738, project, plan and elevation

I t VA I ION It )IV 1. 1) 1 . M, U)RIN

(from Etlin, "Les Dedans").

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demands.... The difficulty resided in

regular exteriors, or at least exteriors not generated

combining a facade with regularly spaced

by interior arrangement, with irregular interiors. For

movement (1920-1940), however, it was the

windows all the same size with correctly

picturesque buildings, however, there was no

proportioned rooms of different dimensions.38

perceived problem to be resolved because the same

academic writers who gave substance to these

ideas; the directive saturates the academic treatises

romanticism that savored picturesque images of a

of the early twentieth century, books written to

The results of Blondel's design process are

classical past also appreciated medieval asymmetry

promote neomedieval and Neo-Renaissance styles

and methods, not modernism.

anathema to a modernist sensibility. For instance,

and haphazardness, in which a combination of

During the "heroic period" of the Modern

the fact that the same-size windows often light and

rooms of wildly different contour could easily be

ventilate both closets and public rooms is obviously

accommodated. But, although the picturesque tradi-

inside-outside relationships in The Principles of

a condition that a twentieth-century functionalist

would not countenance.

tion made it easier for individual rooms to assert

Architectural Composition (1924):

As the variety of room and program types

Howard Robertson explained his theory of

themselves, this did not mean that the various

bulges, wings, pavilions, and protuberances regularly

The portion of the elevation corresponding

proliferated in the eighteenth and nineteenth

corresponded to the specific spaces behind. Some-

with some principal element of the plan will be

centuries, some architects sought to reconcile

times they did, and sometimes they did not.

appropriately richer in treatment and in general

"The Outside Is the Result of an Inside" 28

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accentuation. More simply and monotonously

Robertson had a caveat, however. He held that

treated portions will correspond with internal

too close an inside-outside correspondence might

corridors and connecting links of the plan, and

wreck an otherwise good facade: "Expression of

minor emphasis will convey the presence of

plan in elevation may be carried to absurd lengths.

like "direct conflict" and "discrepancy."49 He

continues:

In the bulletin which the museum published on

the occasion of the house's exhibition we are

secondary, but nevertheless important, plan

It is a common failing, for instance, to stress unduly

elements.39

the height of a hall which is an important plan

told that the double-story package of the

element, in order to make its location more

garage and "parents' apartment" is design to

Two years later, Nathaniel Cortlandt Curtis

maintained that "the plan determines many of the

elements essential to the composition which cannot

be fixed by the elevations or facades, and to which

evident.... The mere presence of importance of

be added at a later stage .... Yet however

bulk and position cannot always be directly indicated in facade."43

plausible this design decision may be from a

A.E. Richardson and Hector Corfiato - two

rather late apologists for classical architecture

the latter must conform."40

Other examples proliferate. Arthur Stratton, in

Elements of Form & Design in Classic Architecture

(1925) had a similar opinion: "In all good design the

plan finds expression externally, and features subor-

dinate to the general outline of a building are in

direct relation to the plan."41 As practical applica-

tions within neoclassic and Neo-Gothic practice,

however, the most important feature of plan-

elevation correspondence concerned the massing of

dominant and subordinate elements, which were
only remotely related to interior spaces. The almost
axiomatic centrality of major rooms roughly corre-

sponded to the almost axiomatic centrality of the

elevations and masses.

Some of the academic theorists of the early

twentieth century exhibited remarkable balance
regarding the relationship of the interior and the
exterior. Realizing that only certain aspects of interior organization and structure would necessarily

make themselves felt on the facade, Robertson

made a case for accommodation (but hardly a

compromise):

diagrammatic and practical viewpoint, it

becomes utterly implausible when the form of

the volume of the house is considered. Surely

(1 940s) - contended, "as external statements of

one would expect an addition to be joined

interior arrangements alone are insufficient to

where the two roof slopes meet, rather than

provide aesthetic effects, it is obvious that other

made into an arbitrary extension of one of the

aids are required."44

other of the butterfly wings.

By the mid-twentieth century, the idea that

the internal spaces of buildings ought to provide

Although Herdeg is not describing specifically

a facade issue, the inside-outside correspondence is

the norm of external expression - and that any variation from this norm is understandable and

there, nonetheless. Buildings like the MOMA Exhibi-

justifiable only as an ironic deviation from the

tion House, Herdeg avers, "devalue what were the

norm - was tacitly accepted by modern architects.45

once rigorous standards of architecture."50 Herdeg

The pervasiveness of the doctrine is apparent in the

finishes off his argument with another example from

argument set forth in a polemical text of the early

Le Corbusier: the Besnos House, Vaucresson (1922).

1980s: The Decorated Diagram, by Klaus Herdeg.46

Here, Herdeg explains away the lack of correspon-

Herdeg faults Gropius's followers at Harvard for not

dence between space and facade by explaining that

following the Bauhaus principles closely enough and

Le Corbusier was being ironic: "[the] outside having

introduces his case with a comparison of Le Corbu-

little correspondence with what lies behind it in

sier's Errazuris House in Chile (1930) (Figure 3) and

total opposition to the modern movement belief

Marcel Breuer's "Exhibition House" at the Museum

that the exterior of a building should reflect its

of Modern Art, New York, of 1949 (Figure 4).

interior."51 Again, Herdeg compares Le Corbusier to

Herdeg praises Le Corbusier's house and criticizes

more-recent architects, this time Ulrich Franzen and

Breuer's, and his primary gambit of criticism is that,

Philip Johnson, concluding that their "false-fronts"

although both houses have "butterfly" roofs, the

on Fifth Avenue in New York are to be abjured

roof covering Le Corbusier's house displays a tighter

because they lack the sophisticated irony displayed

relationship to the interior spaces than does

at Vaucresson.52

[S]ince we are dealing with solids, the internal

Breuer's. "In the Errazuris house ... the V-shaped

forms, of which the elevations are merely the

roof interlocks with and thus enhances the meaning

Space, Independent of Matter

envelope, are bound to find some expression

of several other aspects of the house."47 In con-

As American architectural education evolved from

on the exterior. An analogy is that between the

trast, the valley of the butterfly roof in Breuer's

Ecole des Beaux-Arts style to "Bauhaus" style, it

covering of the body and its internal structure

house, "instead of being placed in a spatially and

retained more than just the French teaching vocab-

and organs, which, while not expressed in

symbolically meaningful position ... happens to

ulary. The traditional concept of inside-outside

detail on the exterior, dictate nevertheless the

coincide with the wall between the bathroom and

correspondence finds its latter-day paradigm in the

general contours of the human form.42

utility room."48 Herdeg presses his case with words

Bauhaus-inspired student projects of the post-

29 SCHUMACHER

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3. Le Corbusier, Errazuris house, Chile, 1930, section (Le Corbusier, Oeuvre compl&te, 7929-34).

4. Marcel Breuer, MoMa House, 1949, New York (from Herdeg, The Decoroted Diagram).

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"The Outside Is the Result of an Inside" 30

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World War II era. These highly abstract projects are

recent critics have interpreted an interest in abstract

sometimes referred to as the "exploded cube." The

space to architects going back to the Renaissance.55

exploded cube project is composed of consistently

For modern architects committed to the

vertical support on the exterior. The free facade,

more inchoate and abstract, might seem to imply

some other expressive intent. But Le Corbusier

structured elements, either with a limited envelope

expression of program function and volume, space

described both elements in precisely the same

or as a picturesque assembly, like drawers being

could now operate in the service of that function

manner in the Oeuvre Complete: "The windows can

pushed and pulled in and out on the x, y, and z

and seep to the outside of the building. Premodern

... run from edge to edge."56 For Le Corbusier, the

axes of a kind of all-sided dresser. Students in

facade hierarchy had derived from ideas of perma-

plasticity of the facade is a more general adumbration of the idea of the frame.

schools of architecture across the U.S. were given

nence, the demands of masonry construction, and

exploded-cube projects in elementary design studio

courses. One of the rules of the game was to main-

the spanning of great distances. Long spans meant

thick walls, buttresses, or side aisles. The exterior

free facade and asked architects to abjure any

tain volumetric correspondence between inside and

surfaces of masonry buildings, when they registered

facade regularity (see Figure 5):

outside; no volume could be added or removed, a

anything of the internal organization, registered the

kind of "conservation of space."

struggle to create the clear span.

With the advent of the new materials and

There is no reason why every window in a

structural techniques all this changed. It was now

not have a character of its own. Once you get

Only when "space" could be distinguished by

modern architects as independent of structure could

Bruno Zevi insisted on a literal freedom for the

building should be just like the next one and

the exploded cube have been developed. "Space,"

possible to span virtually any distance with a flat

rid of the tyranny of classicism, windows will

in the general (singular) sense as a positive, inde-

ceiling and enclose the volume with thin

be all the more effective if they are different

and can convey a host of messages. Classicism

breaks the facade into vertical and horizontal

pendent, and abstract essence is the final aspect of

membranes. No longer did the articulated pieces of

this argument. Architects are often called molders of

construction have to intervene to give concrete

space, but the term space was not always an essen-

form to the expressive intent; construction could be

sections. But eliminating the juxtaposition and

tial word for architects. Peter Collins suggested that

abstracted.

superimposition of modules will make the

"space," before the turn of the twentieth century,

was itself an idea subsumed within structure:

Conclusion

facade whole again.57

Whereas for Rowe and Slutzky, and later Herdeg, Le

Zevi made no pretense of a functionalist argu-

Whereas the Rationalists, such as Violet-le-

Corbusier represents the dissenting attitude

ment. His interest in having all the windows

Duc, could conceive only of the structure of

concerning inside-outside correlations, to most

different was not that they might light and ventilate

churches as providing the archetype for a new

modernists he is responsible for having created the

each room perfectly, but that they may convey

way of building, Wright took the space, and it

common wisdom that the norm of facade expression

some message about the nature of modernism as

is this that distinguishes Wright from the other

should be internal volume. Perhaps that is because

compared to classicism. His windows are all different

great architects of his generation .... Hence-

he was one of the few architects to write about it.

precisely because they couldn't be all different in a

forth, space was regarded as the twin partner

with structure in the creation of architectural

Moreover, his distinction between free facade and

classical building. That so many architects have

ribbon window (two of his five points for the "new

composition.53

architecture") would seem to support this interpre-

taken Le Corbusier's metaphor literally is perhaps a

testament to the seductiveness of the inside-

tation. Both of these elements are made possible by

outside continuum, and the seductiveness of Van

Wright confirmed that to him space was some-

the separation of structure and enclosure, itself

Doesburg's abstraction. It is a highly particularized

made possible by the reinforced concrete or steel

yet omnipresent version of the idea that architec-

argued for "the essential of the architectural change

frame, and both inventions openly indicate the exis-

ture should be like the human body, as offered by a

from box to free plan and the new reality that is

space instead of matter."54 So strong is the modern

tence of the frame behind, whatever surface is hung

on it. The ribbon window announces the existence

recent magazine ad for a high-fiber cereal: "If you

take care of the inside, the inside takes care of the

notion of the independence of "space" that some

of the structural frame by the visible absence of

outside."

thing independent; writing many years later, he

31 SCHUMACHER

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5. Bruno Zevi, facade and window studies (from The Language of Modern Architecture).

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Notes

20. R. Etlin, Symbolic Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

43. Ibid, pp. 137-138.

1. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (London: The Architectural

1994), p. 49.

44. A.E. Richardson and H.O. Corfiato, Design in Civil Architecture,

21. R. Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form (Berkeley: Univer-

vol. 7, Elevational Treatments (London: The English Universities Press,

Press, 1927), p. 167.

2. H.R. Hitchcock, Painting Towards Architecture (New York: Duell,

Sloan and Pearce, 1948), p. 11.

3. J.W. Goethe, "Of German Architecture," from Goethe's Werke
(Weimar, 1896, 1 Abth., xxxvii), pp. 127 ff.

4. John Summerson, "A Case for the Theory of Modern Architecture,"

RIBA Journal (June 1957): 309.

sity of California Press, 1977), p. 204.

1948), p. 18.

22. Van Doesburg, "Towards a Plastic Architecture," reprint, p. 187.

45. In the early 1980s, Beaux-Arts-trained architect Jean Paul Carlhian

23. P. Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, p. 274.

expressed disdain for the U.S. Supreme Court building because the

24. Nikolaus Pevsner, Outline of European Architecture (London:

courtroom wasn't displayed on the exterior. He proposed building a new

Pelikan, 1958), p. 285.

25. H.R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson, The International Style (New York:

Norton), pp. 40-49.

5. Ibid.

6. R. Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (New York:

Praeger, 1960), p. 20.

7. R. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York:

The Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 31.

8. See P. Collins, Changing Ideals in Modem Architecture (Montreal:
McGill-Queens University Press, 1978).
9. Marc-Antoine Laugier, trans., An Essay on Architecture [1753] (Los

Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977).

10. G. Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kunsten
(Frankfurt: Verlag fur Kunst on Wissenschaft, 1860).

11. Joseph Rykwert, "Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Style," in D.

Porphyrios, ed., Architectural Design Profile: On the Methodology of

Architectural History (London: Architectural Design, 1981), p. 12.

12. G. Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 102.

13. Ibid.

14. Rosemarie Bletter, "Gottfried Semper," entry in the MacMillan Ency-

clopedia of Architects, vol. 4 (New York: MacMillan, 1982), p. 27.

15. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, in I. Rowland and TN. Howe,

eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 34.

26. G.C. Argan, The Renaissance City (New York: Braziller, 1969), p. 30.
27. See T Schumacher, "Palladio Variations," The Cornell Journal of

Architecture, III (1987): pp. 12-29. See, also, C. Rowe and R. Slutzky,
"Transparency, Literal and Phenomenal," Perspecta 8 (1958): 45-54.
28. George Hersey, High Victorian Gothic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1972), p. 38.

29. Ibid, p. 40.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 43.

32. Van Doesburg, "The Will to Style: The Reconstruction of Life, Art,

the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,

1983).

47. Ibid., p. 6.

48. Ibid., p. 10.

49. Ibid., p. 11. Surely, only one schooled in the precepts I am
describing here would see this as a problem.

50. Ibid., p. 12.

51. Ibid., p. 18.

52. Ibid., pp. 20-24.

reprinted in H.L.C. Jaffe, de Stijl (New York: Abrams, 1970), p. 160.

53. Collins, Changing Ideals in Modem Architecture, p. 71.

33. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 28.

54. Wright, "Destruction of the Box," from an address to the Junior

34. Ibid., p. 36.

Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1952, reprinted in E.

35. Rowe and Slutzky, "Transparency, Literal and Phenomenal."

Kaufman and B. Raeburn, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings

36. See Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth Century Roman Palaces: Use and

(New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 285.

the Art of the Plan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990).

55. Arnaldo Bruschi, in his assessment of Bramante, claimed for the

37. See Michael Dennis, Court and Garden (Cambridge, MA: The MIT

Press, 1986).
38. Richard Etlin, "Les Dedans: J.F Blondel and the System of the
39. Howard Robertson, The Principles of Architectural Composition

17. G. Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture, p. 103.

(London: The Architectural Press, 1924), p. 133.

18. G. Semper, "Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kunsten

40. N.C. Curtis, Architectural Composition (Cleveland: J.H. Jansen,

oder pradtische Aesthetik," vol. 1, p. 7, quoted and translated in J.

1926), p. 117.

Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: The

41. A. Stratton, Elements of Form and Design in Classic Architecture

MIT Press, 1981), p. 30.

(London: Studio Editions, 1925), p. 129.

19. Theo Van Doesburg, "Towards a Plastic Architecture," in de Stijl, VI,

42. Robertson, The Principles of Architectural Composition, p. 127. This

6/7, 78-83, reprinted in H.L.C. Jaffe, de Stijl (New York: Abrams,

is the same publisher and the same year of the publication in English of
Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture.

1971), p. 189.

1981.)
46. Klaus Herdeg, The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and

and Technology" (Text of a lecture given at Jena, Weimar, and Berlin),

Home," Gazette des Beaux Arts (April, 1978): 140.

16. Ibid.

one. (Conversations with the author and other participants of a Charrette for Urban Design in Washington, National Building Museum,

Renaissance architect the capacity to conceive of "space in itself, in the

shape of a void thought of as having a three-dimensional quality of its
own: emptiness not conditioned by the shape of the walls around it, but
on the contrary, conditioning them" (Bruschi, Bramante, London: Thames
and Hudson, 1973), p. 74. It is difficult to say whether this is an instance

of a modern critic anachronistically ascribing a quality to a long-dead

architect, or a case of an architect, Bramenti, who invented something
neither he nor his contemporaries were able to put into words.

56. Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complete, 1910-29 (Zurich: Les Editions

d'Architecture, 1964), p. 128.
57. B. Zevi, The Modem Language of Architecture (Seattle: University

Washington Press, 1978), p. 8.

33 SCHUMACHER

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