Stuart
Harrison
PAPER
for SAHANZ 2004
‘Words
on Buildings’
ABSTRACT:
The
paper will examine the role of text on buildings and the motivations and
architectural consequences of this approach.
Citing
Labrouste’s Library Saint-Genevieve as an original precedent, the study will
examine the Marion Cultural Centre by Ashton Raggatt McDougall (
Both
the associative meanings and the architectural devices of text as façade
treatment are of interest; the apparent dumbness of the strategy is belied by
such significant architects using the technique from time to time; which in
addition to the aforementioned includes Frank Gehry (Santa Monica Place),
Fredrick Romberg (ETA Factory) and Robert Venturi.
The
degree to which architectural words are readable is of interest – if the word
is clearly readable does the building adopt a more public role? The limits of legibility, using Neil Levine
as starting point, are to be discussed through the mentioned projects in particular
the ARM building.
How
is the treatment as cited different to signage?
Do words substitute for an architectural language no longer readable to
most? How is the word architecturalised?
ILLUSTRATIONS:
1.
Comparison of Words on the Commercial
Leo’s Restaurant,
Photography by the author, 2000
2.
Photography by the author, 2004
PAPER
This
paper examines the use of words or text as an architectural treatment on
buildings. More particularly it attempts to examine the public role of this
treatment and to examine architectural intentions and consequences or readings
of this.
Writing was at one time written into stone
(rather than paper or electronically), and used to record important cultural
information: here we look at some examples that use text as a part of an
architectural language that can be drawn upon. This study is does not include
dates on buildings to record their construction, or headstones. The use of
words or text on buildings is historically referred to as inscription, as most examples historically use this as the
technique for casting words onto buildings.
At
the core of this investigation is the question of whether a building can be read
as more public if it uses words. Key concepts are legibility and choice of
word(s); and the relationship between the use of a language of words and a more
traditional architectural language perceived to be unreadable by the population
at large. A traditional architectural language here is considered as the system
of culturally embedded forms (such as Classical porticos and columns, Gothic
windows) that can be associated and reinforce a particular social condition or
historical period.
It
is important in this paper to distinguish between the outlined approach and
signage. Signage is the adornment of graphic wording or symbols to convey the
function of a building. The buildings of interest here integrate text into
them, which becomes inseparable from the project. This often takes the form of
façade treatment, but can, as in the case of the Marion Cultural Centre by
Ashton Raggatt McDougall, be a formal strategy for the whole project.
The
Library Saint Genevieve
The
Library Saint Genevieve appears early in Labrouste’s career and in many ways
can be seen as a Venturi-like decorated shed. A relatively simple rectangular
box is adorned with two systems of language – a simple, evidently applied,
classicism, and words adorning the principal stone band of the building’s first
floor. Neil Levine’s analysis of the building in his essay, The Romantic Idea of Architectural
Legibility: Henri Labrouste and the Neo-Grec proposes a reading of the
building’s façade treatment as thin – in that the surface treatment of
classicism and text is clearly a shallow façade treatment. It is generally
accepted that Labrouste’s romanticism enables him to draw upon various
languages and use them at his disposal, making them evident. The text is the
most literal of these:
The
810 inscribed names on Labrouste’s library illustrate a democratic
all-inclusiveness …Labrouste’s inscribed panels face an open volume and
transcribe onto its exposed faces the progressive development of historical
change. The meaning of that progress is open to all who can read.[1]
The
proportion of people who could read at the time is considerable less than now;
but all users of the building, as it is a library, would have been able to
comprehend the text. Levine also makes clear that writing, or inscription, was
not new in the mid 19th Century; both Boullée and Durand had used text
to replace an Order, as a rhetorical device.[2]
For Labrouste, the use of text was a “less rhetorical form of literary
expression, as revealed in the abstract, rational, and reflexive relationship
between the printed word and its adherent meaning, that was intended to
dominate the architectonic form.”[3]
Spiro
Kostof is one of the few writers outside of Levine to mention the role of
writing, or inscription, on the Labrouste building:
His library
of St. Genevieve we admire today for the metallic elegance of its reading
room…But far from being a manifesto of structural rationalism, Labrouste’s
design sought to give literary expression to the building program, a library of
the industrial age. The exposed metal armature, the historicist masonry shell,
and the inscriptions were coordinated with this in mind.[4]
What
separates Labrouste’s Library with other buildings of the time is however the
use of text on it. The semiotics discussed here are clear: the building is a
library, the names of the authors cast into the façade both represent the texts
within and is itself a text: a sort of index or catalogue than can be read from
outside. This accompanied with the relatively non-hierarchal classical
treatment says Public Library.
The classicism of the Library is a subtle one – not a Greek highly centered and
symmetrical type; a far more palazzo Romanesque evenness. Given the lateness of
the building, the choice of style was open to Labrouste, and he does use a
Grecian language for another word-based gateway project.[5]
The simplicity of classicism, if read through a system such as Peter Kohane’s
consideration of Decorum,[6]
would indicate that this building is perhaps utilitarian in nature, public but
not important (it was, as Barry Bergdoll points out, in the shadow of the
nearby Church of Saint Genevieve).[7] It
is possible that Labrouste considers the remaining semiotic work to be
completed by the words on the building. In this sense, the use of words is part
of a strategy. This approach is intended to clearly communicate both the
public-ness of the building and its function.
The
decision to add the text, was, according to Bergdoll, a late one;
As the
scaffolding was to come down in August 1848, he ordered the workmen to carve
the names of authors whose works were contained in the library onto the panels
under the reading windows. It was as though the library catalogue itself
generated a new form of architectural ornament.[8]
In
a contemporary example, just the word ‘Library’ might be used, or even ‘Saint
Genevieve’, but the intention is clear: text used to make public the building
by extending its contents, that of the bourgeois library, into openness of the
street. The words signify both the role of building to those who can read and
those not; words are generally recognisable as that which is contained in books
by all. Labrouste was attempting to make a sophisticated modern building that
could be understood and read, and was located within an urban context in which
it was not the dominant part. [9]
Modernity and Text:
Romberg
Swiss-trained
architect Fredrick Romberg is partly credited with the design of Australian
Pavilion for the 1940 New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. Harriet
Edquist argues that “the external lettering and ornament reflect Swiss
practice”.[10]
Nationality, or place, is established by the use of text; and in this case a
map of Australia as well. The design, a mix of a stately classical tendency and
an austere modernity reflect a contemporary sense but do not place the building
– the writing completes the intention.
The
original scheme (1957) for the ETA factory by Grounds Romberg & Boyd (with
Romberg acknowledged as primary author) shows the acronym ETA integrated into
the building, the letters sitting within the infill spaces between the
building’s steel frame. Here the letters are flush with the façade, and do not
sit clearly proud of it as in the final (built) scheme. As the first scheme was
not developed to the level of construction systems it is not possible to
determine to what level the characters would have been integrated into the
walling, but the renderings clearly suggest that there was little formal or
material separation between them and the structural frame. The built scheme
features large lightweight letters that have a strong and distinctive
relationship to the main building. Helen Stuckey suggests that the building was
one of the first to use supergraphics in Melbourne.[11]
It can be suggested that the large letters were the intention of the architect
as they appear integrated in the original scheme.
The
structural bracing is another ‘character’ on this façade – it was coloured
metallic gold; the ‘ETA’ letters were bright red. Both elements however clearly
brighter than the main façade, together forming a something like ‘> ETA’,
where ‘>’ is the structural cross bracing. The curtain wall façade
represents modernity, the mass produced, suitable for a new post-war factory
and offices. The bracing and text elements communicate both the name of the
company and a strong link to the road, an acknowledgement to the speed that the
building will primarily be viewed at, due to its adjacency to the major road.
Here, the text is used to extend the intentions of the project.
American Post-Modernity
and Text
The
use of text has occurred frequently in the work of Venturi & Scott-Brown.
This is usually in two types; the name of the place and building, such as
‘Trenton Fire Station’ or the name of a
company as in the ‘Best’ supermarkets. Venturi approaches the use of words from
both a position similar to signage - the post-war American commercial
vernacular; and the semiotic discussion of classicism as demonstrated in Complexity
and Contradiction.
In
this case, the detachment of the text elements from these Venturi buildings is
conceivable - at one level the architects are including signage as part of
their scope of work. This recognises the importance of signage (and the way
buildings are commonly seen) in the modern city and the ability of the
architect to extend their design to include this vital element. The separation
of the words from the Venturi buildings would be similar to what has occurred
at the ETA building – where the letters have been removed – the project slips
back into its context and becomes undistinguishable.
The
first stage of Frank Gehry’s independent architectural practice was based in
his home town of Santa Monica, part of the metropolis of Los Angeles. Living
and working in Santa Monica, most of the early Gehry work is there and in
neighbouring Venice Beach. The largest project in Gehry’s home town was Santa
Monica Place, a large shopping centre in the heart of the suburb. Gehry
understood the potential of the type as he had worked for American shopping
centre designer Victor Gruen (who also wrote numerous books of the topic
including Shopping Towns USA). The complex consists of a suburban
internal mall-based centre on a relatively dense site. The multi-story car-park
of the centre is of interest here – one main wall facing into a primary road
into Santa Monica has cast on it ‘SANTA MONICA PLACE’ in enormous letters. The
car-park is of conventional open slab and column concrete construction – the
ends of the floors are open. Gehry adds, as part of the scheme, a displaced
semi-transparent skin, two metres out from the edge of slab. The space
in-between contains occasional stairs – but is essentially open. The second
façade system is of chain link metal loops with varying densities to mark out
the characters. The openness of system continues to allow natural ventilation
into the car-park, but the chain is dense enough to make the words very
readable. Here, the normal hierarchy of shopping centre pedestrian entry being
demarcated as the principal element on the façade is rejected – the
conventionally neglected car-park façade becomes both attractive and inherently
public – all can read it, enter and comprehend it.
Proximity
Leo’s
restaurant is a privately owned building with a public presence. In Fitzroy
Street, St. Kilda, it has a façade composed from brown brick and clear finish
aluminum framed glazing. The simple orthogonal lettering is made with brick,
the spaces between the characters and the different arms of the characters are
glazed. The word is not clearly readable, most people do not tend to notice the
letters. This is partly due to the proximity of the word to the viewer. At the
distance from the immediate footpath only the vernacular of the brick and
glazing is readable, but from across the street when looking toward the
shop-front is a view of the word is clear. Within the restaurant, it is again
hard to read the word, through the interior clutter and in reverse.[12]
The Marion Building
Ashton
Raggatt McDougall’s (ARM) Marion Cultural Centre, in suburban Adelaide, uses
letters as figured double columns and arches. The choice of word, ‘MARION’,
seems ‘dumb’ or obvious, but it forms a contextual link to the commercial and
public buildings of the area. Several of the local civic buildings use the word
‘Marion’ in relatively large letters to locate themselves on a generic late
modern architecture. Commercial signage dominates the road-scape of suburban
Adelaide (there are no sign-free freeways as in other Australian cities). Here,
the architects are engaging this suburban condition, taking onboard the retail
vernacular of the large shopping centre and making it exceptional and generous,
the intention to make it public.
The
Marion building is sited as a gateway to the very large Westfield Shopping
Centre. In this way it is between the main shopping centre building and the
main road that services it. The Marion building is far smaller than the
shopping centre, which is over several floor levels (the ARM building is a
single level). The building uses its proximity to the road to make clearer the
word MARION as seen from this road. The word is readable in part from the
drive-by experience, but is perhaps more visible when users turn into the
service road and the building comes into directly, in a sweeping manner.
Michael Markham summaries succinctly the architects’ parti,
They have made a landmark out of the city’s own
name, as the designers of roadside buildings have so unselfconsciously done for
half a century now. But this isn’t a dumb box (to quote the most original
architectural thinker of the last 50 years) with a sign out front, or on top;
it’s the one pushed into the other.[13]
Only
three letters of the word ‘MARION’ are however on the building, the ‘MAR’. The
‘ION’ is made from landscape features – the ‘I’ a tall sculpture, the ‘O’ an
oval planter bed and the ‘N’ another sculpture. The ‘MAR’ are however treated
in the same typeface, but are manifest slightly differently. The ‘M’ and ‘A’
are formed through a combination of irregular painted steel boxes and altering
depths on vertical steel fins. The solid upper part of the letters extrude into
the Library inside, and are read from the rear within the library. This
extrusion is broken to allow for the full height glazing and a walk space,
enabling the user to walk within these letters.
It
is however the ‘R’ that is the most important in forming a spatial condition
and associative language for the project. The ‘R’ is last letter that is part
of the building; it is in-between the building and landscaping. It extrudes
down the entire primary side of the building and forms the main entry into the
building and an arcade. The ‘R’ is conceptually extruded along a curved path
running down this edge of the project, but the treatment to the edge is not
consistent as the extrusion is cut in plan. This truncation results in a
mirrored cut ‘R’ and two adjoining arcade spaces. This space is arcade-esque as
the form of the enclosure is effectively arched.
The
question of whether the word is readable is of interest here. Like Leo’s,
proximity to the word makes it harder to read. In the case of Marion, one can
occupy the word, and within here a tension exists between the sensuous form and
materiality (of copper and painted timber battens) and the sense of being
within a letter – seeing and R or A around you. When just outside them, like on
the footpath outside Leo’s, the attention is on the tectonic and materiality of
the building; the lapped copper cladding sheets or the orange painted steel
fins; there is nothing to read when at the façade, only when away from it or
within it.
Unlike
Leo’s however, the viewer always approaches the Marion building from a
distance, as it
is
sited in the middle of a corner lot – that of the busy Diagonal Road and one of
the main entry points to the retail park in which Marion Westfield Shopping
Centre is the dominant part. The word is readable as the architectural language
is intensified – the use of bright
orange painted steel and copper cladding presents the building as significant.
If
the building had used the language of classicism, the same sense of readability
would not occur; (historical) classicism is not employed for public buildings
in the contemporary world – it is now the domain of large residential work.
Classicism is therefore associated with either old public institutions, like
the State Library of Victoria or suburban track housing; one borrowing from the
other. Therefore a new building in the suburbs (as this one is) would appear
more like a house than a public institution if classicism were used. This is
unless the language underwent the sort of manipulation we see in Venturi’s
Seattle Art Museum; and the context was more traditionally urban.
The
architects who have tended to use text or words are generally interested in a
local condition or expression. This is true for ARM and the early work of Frank
Gehry; and in the work of Venturi & Scott Brown. These same architects also
use other devices to denote the local – a particular (local) vernacular for
example.
This
can be said of the Marion building. The vernacular of the shopping centre
building is used and then exaggerated. The black precast concrete walling
around the main rear façade of the building uses the same construction system
as most shopping centre perimeter walling. Instead of this being a more natural
colour (typically beige) the dark colour inverts this (off-black) but is still
part of this language. Further exaggeration or intensification comes from the
irregular shape of the panels themselves – they interlock as per normative
precast panels, but register a shift or development in the module, a minimal
move toward figuration, or a registration of movement at ground level. A bright
orange stripe also on this wall is achieved through both a rough concrete
finish to these areas and in its painting in this bright colour. This
undulating line is also a large ‘M’ character, ‘M’ for Marion. The inset cut
into the precast concrete is also a feature of more recent precast walling at
shopping centres – in these cases a token horizontal cut is used to ‘break-up’
the scale of the often imposing blank walls that dominate the landscape of
shopping centre exteriors and car-parks. It is within this context that the
Marion project is located, and satisfies and need for a public building within
the domain of a large privately owned shopping centre.[14]
The
identification of place can be seen to be important here as part of an
intention to make a project local. The word ‘Marion’ creates a sense of place,
in a place where many architects and urbanists would feel that this was
difficult. Ian McDougall, speaking about the building at the Victorian RAIA in
2002, talked of an affiliation that the building attempted with suburban
Adelaide where he had grown up. This sense of place is not akin to that of
Norberg-Schultz in an essentialist way, it more readily accepts the qualities
of a place and attempts to make those significant and public. For example, the
carpark at Marion is like many carparks, but it is a good carpark in that has
an attention to its graphic and spatial layout that makes it also different to
the generic. The aforementioned black pre-cast paneling also works in this way.
The
interior and entry sequence of the building is of interest: the entry, mid-way
along the arcade, brings the user into an open circulation space that is
partially filled with a café and very wide steps leading up to the library (in
a manner akin to Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library). This space shares an
affinity in configuration with Roy Ground’s National Gallery of Victoria in
Melbourne – also through the use of the same vertical panel ceiling system,
featured in the original gallery spaces of the NGV. The building contains the
library, a modest gallery and auditorium. The latter is the most interior of
all, with no windows and clad internally with plywood panels. These stained
panels feature many small holes in groupings; possibly the form of coded text
as used on other ARM projects (such as the Braille on the National Museum of
Australia). A more direct symbol is used on the ceiling, with a two pixilated
hands similar to icons of computing operating system Microsoft Windows
touching in a configuration like that of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Here, ARM draw upon imagery and new technology (both Windows and
computer based machine drilled plywood paneling) to give a readable expression.
In
the comparison to Labrouste’s Library we can see and far more restricted use of
words or letters at Marion. Whereas Marion contains only one word (or just part
of), Library Saint Genevieve contains many names of authors. As suggested
before, this is like a book on a building. Marion eliminates the quantity of
words but increases the scale, so that they can become the main architectural
treatment; that which is then rendered with different material and
architectural approaches. Saint Genevieve is more restrained by comparison.
This enlargement of letters at Marion puts them into a scale directly
comparable with columns. Acting vertically and figured they share the
un-abstracted role the column enjoyed prior to Modernity. This is clear at the
front of the Library where the letters are internalized and have a robustness
in both size (they are not thin) and material – welded steel plate rather than
boxed-out plasterboard. This solidity engrains them further into the project,
and they have a role as part of the structure of the building.[15]
The diagonal nature of parts of the letters makes them both raking columns and
bracing; like that used by Romberg at ETA (the structure there was as thin as
possible however).
Memorials
often use text to commemorate events, people and locations of significance and
this architectural type contains a certain specialty that evokes an
identification and ownership.[16]
By borrowing from this, the sense of connection from the individual to the
building is achieved in the examples cited; a sense of the public. The ability
to easily decoded and read text on a building forms this connection to a wider
idea; as long as the individual can read English.
Types and Public-ness
Several
main approaches seem to be clear with the use of words on buildings. Firstly,
the word is the place, i.e. ‘MARION’ or ‘SANTA MONICA PLACE’. Second, the text
describes the owner of the building, and is more like conventional signage,
i.e. Leo’s, ETA or Venturi’s BEST supermarkets. A third grouping contains
more coded long phrases, such as the inscription on the Pantheon or the names
of key people involved in a society, such as on Labrouste’s Library. Another
minor group are pavilions such as those in Garden of the Venice Biennale;[17]
national follies that use one word to indicate the place that they are from,
rather than where they are as in the first group. Here, the written word is
used to complete the intentions of the project that the strictly architectural
language cannot on its own.
Both
Labrouste’s Library and ARM’s Marion building use text as part of a suite of
language at their disposal to the same end – to create a readable public
building within an urban context in which they are not the dominant member.
Both buildings use a dominant architectural vernacular, new technology and
words to make the building open conceptually; and therefore establishing a
public role. This is opposed to a physical openness or transparency – often
manifest as large glazed walls in public buildings. Other projects examined
also use words on them to confirm or develop an intention of the architect; and
this is often to expand the building into having clearly public role. It is
clear that the approach of using words on buildings is both rich and enables
users to read and identify the public intentions of the architect.
Stuart
Harrison
stuart.harrison@rmit.edu.au
Endnotes