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The Appearance of Modern

Architecture
Andrew Benjamin
Published online: 24 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: Andrew Benjamin (2004) The Appearance of Modern Architecture,
Architectural Theory Review, 9:1, 36-44, DOI: 10.1080/13264820409478505

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 26.
Architectural Theory Review

THE APPEARANCE OF MODERN

ARCHITECTURE

ANDREW BENJAMIN
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This paper connects the question of modem architecture to the general problem-
atic of appearance. Apperance. itself arises as a result of the debate on 'style'
that marked architectural theory and practice in Germany in the first part of
the nineteenth century. The problematic status of appearance should play a
fundamental role in any assessment of claims about the autonomy of architec-
ture. The project of the paper is to draw together these threads and thus delimit
a specific locus of research.

"In order for pan of the past to be touched by the present instant there must be no continuity
between them." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, (N7.7)

The insistence on the autonomy of architecture—indeed on the autonomy of any space defined by a
complex relation between discourse, practice and history—means that the question of how to write
within it has an acuity that vanishes if autonomy were to be refused. However, rather than insist on
autonomy as being self-evident, it can be approached, initially, from the other direction. The question
therefore is what does it mean for that autonomy to have been given up? Of the many ways this can
occur, oneof the more pervasive has to do with the image. While it will always be true that architecture
is inextricably bound up with the means of its own representation, it does not follow from the truth
of that presupposition that architecture is either coterminous with its representation, or. has to be
understood within the framework of representation. In addition, the reduction of architecture to
its image precludes emphasis being given to a connection between the history of architecture and
the history of material possibility. (While an image can be of matter's work, that is one possibility
announced, now, by the image's inherently over-determined nature.) The common practice that
juxtaposes images that are external to architecture with ostensibly architectural ones, in order that
the former illuminate the later, will invariably reduce architecture to the status, not just of an image,
but equally to its own image. As such, architecture would have become the image of architecture. If
the problematic element is this reduction, and thus the hold of the image, what is it like to turn this
position around-' Not by banning the image but incorporating the image within the field itself. The
initial question therefore concerns the status of the image within autonomy.

While it cannot be argued for in detail in this context, autonomy will be developed in terms of what will
 ^2
Vol. 9 .No. 1. 2004

be called a material event. This material event is the moment at which geometry, program and the work
of materials are interconnected. And yet, that cannot be all. Once the term event' is introduced then
what has to be acknowledged is the possibility of singularity. Not the singularity of the idiosyncratic,
but a conception of the singular in which the specific interconnection between geometry, program
and materials resists any form of generality except as an abstraction and thus as a diagram. Understood
in this sense the material event can define autonomy as much as architecture's potential for criticality
To the extent that architecture becomes the work of matter—a work having an inherently immaterial
dimension—then criticality would not be adduced, its presence would form part of the practice of the
event. A forming thought beyond the opposition of the instrumental and the decorative.
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Furthermore, what is opened up here is the general problem of what counts as experimentation and
research in architecture. It might be necessary in order to answer this question to distinguish between
experimentation for architecture and experimentation in architecture. In regards to the former it is
clear that experiments by engineers and software manufactures who, working together, have created
a range of materials that makes an important addition to architecture. The question of the nature of
that addition, or the incorporation of such developments, becomes a way of understanding the role
of experimentation in architecture. Furthermore, it indicates why collaboration between engineers
and architects is fundamental rather than the expectation that the architect can resolve in advance
questions of materials. Equally, it indicates, or this would be the argument, that the second form of
experimentation is inextricably bound up with what has been identified here as the material event.
The image within autonomy will need to be understood therefore as an image of a material event.

If this formulation becomes the point of departure, then there has to be a contemporary setting in
which thequestion of the image will acquire relevance. (.Any furtherdiscussionofdetail, ornamentation,
decoration, etc., can only be posed after that setting is established.) It will not have relevance simply
in being posed. Here, the setting will be the German 'style' debate that occurred in the nineteenth
century, and which defines how the discursive practice of architecture—at least in that context—is
then constructed. 1 In order to register how emphatic that opening is, and how it recasts the nature
of architecture's autonomy, two specific moments will be taken. The first is the way Winckelmann
sets the scene for the debate by defining the appearance of architecture in terms of imitation. (A term
inextricably bound up with architecture as a representation, with a concomitant stilling of the image
within the demand that it represents.) The second is that the debate's inception involves the refusal of
this conception of imitation. And how that refusal is linked to an investigation of material possibility
Prior to noting more of their detail, a further point has to be made in relation to autonomy. Even
if arguments concerning autonomy are accepted, there is a danger of essentialising autonomy and
thus of turning it into a timeless category. While autonomy will allow architecture to have a history,
that history cannot be understood as determined by timeless considerations and eternal categories
of evaluation and judgment In other words, autonomy cannot be posited as though it functions as
an end in itself. The question of what gives autonomy its particularity is not only contestable—not
autonomv's presence but its particularity—but has to be understood as a site of internal contestation
 2&

and conflict. Allowing for autonomy is not to argue that architecture is always one and the same. Nor.
finally, does autonomy mean a completedifferentiation from widercultural or political concerns. On the
contrary, autonomy signals the way such concerns will be present within the activity of architecture.

In a text of 1818—"Antik und Modern -Goethe asserts in relation to thecontested heritage of Greece,
that, "Every one should be Greek in his own manner. But he should be Greek," ("Jeder set auf seine
Art ein Grieche! Aber er set's").1 While this nuances the position of Winckelmann, to whom it will
be necessary to return, it is a position that is far more equivocal than the emphatic question posed
by Heinrich Hiibsch only ten tears later. Hiibsch's pamphlet, which inaugurated the debate on style,
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is entitled "Im welchem Style sollen wir bauen?" ("In what style ought we to build?")1 Even though
he will provide an answer to his own question with the introduction—perhaps reintroduction—of
Rundbogenstil, it remains the case that the decisive element in the title is the demands stemming
from the interplay of the sollen' and the question mark. What, after all, is the relationship between
a demand, almost an obligation, and its incorporation into a question? The straightforward position
is that the answer is to be determined. The fact that Hiibsch can answer his own question is not the
point. The answer lacks necessity. It is this quality that will allow for a return to the question of the
relationship between style and appearance. For Winckelmann the connection was given. There was no
question. Nothing was to be determined. What is at stake in regards to both Winklemann and Hiibsch
is the interplay between historical time (a conception of time, which in this instance, discloses the
vexed question of the advent of modernity) and mimesis. The latter—mimesis—has to be understood,
in this context, as involving a theory of imitation that is inextricably bound up with the question of
time. It is in this light that it is possible to turn to Winkelmann's pamphlet "On the Imitation of the
Paintings and Sculpture of the Greeks"'

Rather than comment on the work in its entirety, two elements will be of concern. The first, clearly,
is the use of the term imitation' and the second is the role played by Raphael in his overall analysis.
While this may seem a preoccupation that has too great a distance from the question of the appearance
of modern architecture, part of what will be argued here is that it is in the move from Winckelmann
to Hiibsch that the framework emerges in which it will become possible to pose this question. More
significantly, of course, it means that it can be posed in a way that the answer remains open. Both of
these elements are decisive when what is at stake is the appearance of modern architecture.

It is essential to recognise that the key term is imitation.' In his essay Winckelmann writes. 'There is but
one way for the moderns to become great and perhaps unequalled. 1 mean by imitating the ancients"
CdieNachabmungderAlten") (2.60). While this is the favoured strategy, it is vital to he clear concerning
what is meant by imitation. The answer to this question will emerge from a brief consideration of the
role of Raphael. Winckelmann quotes Raphael writing to Count Baldassare Castiglione in regards to
his Galatea that. "Beauty being so seldom found among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image
{Einbildung)"{ 12,68). What is interesting is that the Platonic problem of moving from the ideal to its
realisation is absent from Raphael's epistolary formulation of his methodology as well from the use
 ,'21C>

Vol. 9 No. 1, 2004

made of it by Winkelmann. This absence opens up how imitation is to be understood/ Winkelmann

goes on to identify the presence of the ideal in, for example, that the profile of the brow and the
noses of the gods and goddesses is almost a straight line" (13,68). What is imitated is line, and more
generally—though equally specifically—is contour' (Kontur). Contour as the object and source of
imitation will always stand above nature. Contour allows the move from the individual element to the
whole within the practice of the particular work. This was the source of Raphael greatness, though
equally it was a limit of Michelangelo."

The movement in which contour' and expression' (Ausdnick) come to be connected involves a
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reinscription of the ideal. Rather than the ideal being a transcendent quality and as such unattainable
and unpresentable, it is located in a sense of the appropriate. Note the way Winckelmann plots the
effect of parentbyrsos', a term from Longinus used to plot excess in relation to character." Excess
becomes that which is inappropriate. The possibility of excess will lead to arguments for decorum;
it will preclude all of the detrimental effects that result from allowing excess presence. The example
is Laocoon.

In Laocoon suffering alone had been 'parentbyrsos', the artists therefore, in order to reconcile
the significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a posture, allowing for the
sufferings that were necessary, the next to a state of tranquility; a tranquility however that is
characteristical; the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul of mankind: sedate, but
active, calm but not indifferent or drowsy. (32,82-3)

Propriety, understood as the appropriate, pertains to that which is proper to character rather than to
a transcendental ideal form. Ideals for Winckelmann can be instantiated.* This achievement marks the
work of Raphael. This opens up the complexity within the proposition that greatness in art is found
in imitating the Greeks. What was imitated had to do with a relationship between soul and line, a
relationship that even if the colours of the original fade the enduring presence of the soul remained.
Schelling comments on this passage from Winckelmann. He argues that as an expression of the soul'
(Ausdruck derSeele) it is not drawn from experience. What is expressed therefore is an idea' {Idee)
that transcends nature. Schelling both confirms the inherent idealism of Winckelmann though also
makes it clear that paintings can express' ideals.

Contemporary practice therefore works in relation to a predetermined space of evaluation.

Winckelmann is able to judge, and the ground of judgment is a found sense of propriety that has to
be imitated. Precisely because it is imitation rather than simple copying, it is possible to see a line
between the Greeks and Raphael. However, it is a line determined by continuity. What this means
is that while there may be unexpected forms that will allow contour expression—or at least that is
a potential whose elimination is impossible—the drawing of a line must be continually guided by a
founding sense of the appropriate. This is not a nostalgia for the Greeks in any simple sense. Nor is
it a claim thai Raphael is Greek. It is an argument for the continuance of a conception of style that
 Ml

regulates appearance. The criteria of regulation are given in advance. While appearance may not be
determined in advance—hence the distinction between imitation and simple copying—the question
of style is always resolved. The resolution is given within the structure of mimesis. As a structure, it
establishes a relationship between line and colour (in general appearance) and the ideal. The ideal is
always given within the work and articulated—at least in this pamphlet—in terms of the relationship
between contour and expression. The other defining element of the structure is time. The question
of style is resolved through the activity of imitation; an activity that is itself only possible because of a
conception of historical time thought in terms of continuity. Were that continuity not to pertain—and
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this would mark either a specific moment or a specific work —there will still not be a sustained loss.
The continuity can be recovered. Other, possibly futural, works will enact this possibility. Such acts
of recovery would be further evidence for why the question of style will always have been determined
in advance. In sum. imitation, in the sense in which it used by Winkelmann. is as much a temporal
category as it is one linked to the production of works. Appearance will always be regulated by the
interplay of time and imitation. (In addition, the appropriate—a term that will have a fundamental
role within the style debate once Bcitticher "Die Teklonik der Hellenen" is published in 1852—in the
hands of Winkelmannn, is never discussed in terms of the quality of material as being appropriate
to the realisation of a project. To write of that level of the appropriate would have been to gesture
towards a rethinking of material presence in terms of a material event.)

This is the setting in which Hubsch's pamphlet needs to be read. While Hiibsch's own relation to the
Navrenne School needs to be noted—a historical contextualisation would locate him as part of that
movement—the pamphlet escapes this historical reduction .'The pamphlet could not open with a more
emphatic diagnosis of the current condition of creation. His language repeats Winckelmann's since the
reiteration of 'die Nachahmung' (imitation) both joins the texts and allows for critical engagement.
Nonetheless, what is presented resists equivocation. Instead of arguing foran imitation of the Greeks,
the position is the contrary. What has to be explained is why this counter claim is not just a simple
negation of Winckelmann's position. The pamphlet begins with the following formulation:

Painting and sculpture have long since abandoned the lifeless imitation of antiquity. .Architecture
has yet to come of age and continues to imitate the antique style {den antiken Stylnachzuabmen).
(65,1)

What is significant about this formulation is the positioning of architecture as outside the modern—"it
has yet to come of age—and by that position being defined in relation to style. Once identified in
these terms, the range of possible responses is set up in advance.

This attempt to break the determining hold of imitation is a recurrent motif. It occurs in its most
emphatic form in those conceptions of the modern that ground its inception in an inaugurating
interruption. (This rethinking of the present has to be understood as a conception of modernity.)
Hubsch's pamphlet finishes with a restatement of the contemporary dilemma, and hence the
 •L

contemporary obligation, of architecture.

In even' case buildings logically designed in their basic elements will rank much higher as works
ofart (alsKunsterke),even with the most infelicitous decorations, than the most exact imitations
(diegetreuften Nachahmungen) of ancient art. (100,52)

At the centre of his argumentation is the two-fold move in which the activity of the imagination
comes to be championed at the same time as a simple miming of ancient styles is put to one side.
As such, style comes to the fore as a question. However, coupled to its presence as a question, is the
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necessity to control the excesses of the imagination. In other words, what this early formulation of
the question of style stages is the need to avoid the idiosyncratic. The latter is present as a possibility
precisely because the idiosyncratic is one of the eventualities that cannot be precluded once there is
a break between the present and a sense of continuity that would have been guaranteed by imitation.
Bbtticher's contribution to the debate, both in the book noted above and in his pamphlet on Schinkel
(1846) reinforce the impossibility of defining 'style' in terms of individual aspirations.'" However,
neither that move nor the redefinition of style in terms of tectonic possibilities can be taken as ends
in themselves. They are tied up with another element. The question of style is the national question.
In the first instance this will be the defining way of avoiding particularity. This will account for why
Botticher will argue in regards to style that "only a whole nation can cause its inception." Moreover, a
style may take an "epoch for its development." Not only is style tied to the question of the nation, it is
equally pan of the nation's natural history. Recognising, of course, the artifice of this nature. And yet,
of course, it is the linking of tectonics and style, where the predicament of the modern is understood
as the severance of style and appearance that allows the question of tectonics, though rethought in
terms of material possibilities, to emerge.

What emerges is a complex state of affairs in which the break with imitation allows both for the national
question to be pan of modernity, while linking that relation to the work of materials. That link brings
the national into consideration and yet while being brought into relation it allows, at the same time,
architecture to divest itself of it. Once Riegel's conception of 'Kunstwolleri becomes Kumtwerk'—a
position championed by both Botticher and Semper—then architecture's ideational content is a
structural and hence a material concern. In other words, the impossibility of maintaining continuity
through mime, and of there having to be a break within natural time—a break that constitutes the
modern—once it is articulated within a concern with style, becomes in the first instance insistent
forms of the national question while locating that insistence in structural presence. While Botticher
will, at a given moment, connect style and nationhood, the break with imitation allows for style to
have a projective if not futural quality. It may be, therefore, that the use of style and ornamentation
will project—in the sense of aim to construct—a nation's self-conception. (Not the nation at hand, but
the nation to come.) This should not be seen as an aberrant possibility but as another way through
the predicament of modernity once the latter is understood as a break." Once a return cannot be
made, and once continuity is no longer an option, then the question of how to continue cannot be
 42
Architectural Theory Review

avoided. This is the locus within which the question of style emerges.

The complex relation between style and national identity continues to define how style is understood
throughout the early pan of the twentieth century. In, for example, the lecture "Kunst undTechnik"
given by Peter Behrens in 1910, the two terms are still defined in relation to one another:

By style we mean only the unified formal expression {den einheitlichen Formausdruck), the
manifestation of the entire spiritual life of an epoch (den die gesamten Geistdujienmgen einer
Epocbe ergaben). Unified character, not the particular or the peculiar, is the decisive factor. '-
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There are two points that need to be made here. The first is that the inter-articulation of style and
the national question are a consequence of the interruption that signals the presence of the modern,
which is announced in architectural terms by the severance of the immediate connection between
style and appearance. The second is that it is due to this severance that the link between style and
the national question does not exhaust the question of style, principally because the link is merely a
contingent relation. The presence of that contingency means that the appearance of modern architecture
remains a question whose answer is always to be determined. Moreover, the subsequent recasting
of the modern as International Style also becomes another contingent connection. What this means
is, of course, that International Style simply replaced the national. Therefore, to the extent that there
needs to be a critique of the identification of the modern with the International, this cannot occur
by a return to the national. While it is not possible to pursue it in this context, what emerges is an
opening. Between the national and the International—both of which can be understood as responses
to the question of style—there arises another formulation both of style and of place. Developing it
means giving serious attention to the question of what a cosmopolitan architectural style would
be." Insisting on this to-be-determined quality works within the severance of style and appearance.
However, it does so by linking present practice to a futural dimension. The future is of course always
played out in, and as, the present.

Posed in these terms the question of modern architecture once articulated within the cosmopolitan
moves architecture beyond the image, while still allowing for the image of architecture. Any response
must allow for a complex interplay of design procedures, materials and a reconfiguration of site to be
central within any determination of how the cosmopolitan would appear. And yet. it will never be just
an appearance—mere image—since the movements between design and its realisation, the relations
betweengeometryandmaterialsandfinallythe transformation of the site such that geography becomes
architectural, all raise the question of appearance because not only are they the consequence of its
ineliminability as a question, it is also the case that appearance—architecture's material presence—will
have a modality that cannot have been determined in advance." This is the legacy bequeathed to
design by the interruptive force of Hubsch's question.
 IZL

Notes:
1 This paper isextraaed from a work in progress,Style andTimeEssayson the PoliticsofAppearance. Central
to this project is the argument that the style debate in Germany provides a locus in which to discuss the
emergence of modern architecture. That emergence is bound up with the necessary severance of style and
appearance. This severance is the implicit generator of the debate. The majority of the texts comprising the
debate can be found in English in W, Herrmann (ed), In What Style Shall We Build!' The German Debate
on Architectural Style, Santa Monica: Getty Centre, 1992.
2 Goethe, "Werke," Hamburger Ausgabe Band 12. Schriften zurKunst. C.H. Beck, Munchen, 1994, p. 176.
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3 This text is available in English translation in the anthology cited above. The original German edition is H.
Hiibsch. In welchem Stylesollen wir bauen? Karlsruhe, 1828, (Page references to both editions are given
in the text.)
4 References to Winckelmann are to the following editions. Page numbers are provided in the text, the
English preceding the German. J. Winckelmann, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks.
Henry Fusseli (trans), London: Routledge, 1999 (this edition is a facsimile reproduction of the 1765 edition);
J. ^mMmznn.Kleine Schriften zurGeschichle der KunsldesAlteriums Band 1,Leipzig: InselVerlag, 1925.
For an overview of the role of imitation in Winklemann. one that demonstrates the importance of Raphael
see: Michael Fried. "Antiquity Now: Reading Winckelmann on Imitation," October 3 7 , (Summer 1986): pp
87-92. What Fried shows, amongst other things, is that certain contemporary painters, precisely because of
the nature of their relation to the Greeks, become "inimitable in their own right" (p 92).
5 For a discussion of the exemplary role played by Raphael, an overall account can be found in Wolfgang von
Lohneysen, Raffelunterden Phiosophen. Philosopher! UberRaffel, Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt. 1992. While
Winckelmann is treated throughout, this point is taken up on pp. 40-41.
6 See the treatment of Michelangelo in the Reflections and then a subsequent mention where he is discussed
in relation to Borromini:Johann Joachim Winckelmann. "Anmerkungen iiber die Baukunsl der Allen" in
Schriften und Nachlafl. Band j . Schriften zur antiken Baukunsl. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von
Zabem, 2001, p. 61.
7 For a discussion of the role this term plays in Longinus see DA. Russell. Longinus. On the Sublime, Oxford:
Clarendon Press. 1964, pp. 74-75.
8 Schelling comments on this passage from Winckelmann He argues that as an expression of the soul'
(Ausdruck der Seek) it is not drawn from experience. What is expressed therefore is an idea' [Idee) that
transcends nature. Schelling both confirms the inherent idealism of Winckelmann though also makes it clear
that paintings can express' ideals. See F.W.J. Schelling. "Philosophie der Kunst" in Ausgewdhlte Schriften
Band 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 1985. pp. 385-6. Schelling also discusses the importance of Raphael.
Clearly, it is an examination that draws heavily on Winckelmann's original analysis.
9 The most informative account of Hiibsch s importance within German architectural theory is Barn' Bergdoll.
Archaeology vs History; Heinrich Hiibsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism
in German Architectural Theory," in Oxford Art Journal, 5.2.1983. pp. 3-13.
10 The extracts from Botticher come from the English translation of his essay in Herrmann's anthology. The
best introduction to the significance of Botticher's work on tectonics is M. Schwarzer, "Ontology and
Representation in Karl Botticher .s Theory of Tectonics. Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians.
52 (September. 1993) pp 26"-280. Botticheralsoplaysa fundamental role in Kenneth Frampton's influential
 44.
Architectural Theory Review

article on the centrality of tectonics for the study of architectural history. This position is presented in his
"Rappel a I'ordre: The Case for the Tectonic," in Kenneth Frampton, iMbour. Work and Architecture.
London: Phaidon Press, 2002, pp. 91-103.
11 The recognition that there is a complex inter-articulation between the different permutations of style and
different conceptions of historical time is precisely what is lacking from Carlo Ginzburg's otherwise acute
analysis of how the relationship between universal and particularfigureswithin questions concerning style.
It is not enough to view the question of style historically. That overlooks the fact that the question of style
has a structuring effect on different conceptions of historical time. (There is, of course, a certain reciprocity
that will be at work here.) History will always be implicated in the object of its analysis. See "Style: Inclusion
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and Exclusion," in his Wooden Eyes Nine Reflections on Distance. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper (trans).
London: Verso Books, 2002.
12 This text is available in Tilman Buddensieg, Indastriekidtur Peter Bebrens uncldie AEG1907-1914, Berlin:
Mann Verlag, 1979, pp. 278-285. The particular passage is found on page 279. While it cannot be commented
on here the implicit politics at work in this interconnection of the style and the national question needs
to be noted.
13 For a discussion of the nature of the cosmopolitan and its possible position within architecture, see my "The
Place' of Cosmopolitan Architecture," Architectural Theory Review. 7,1 (April, 2002): pp. 26-36.1 have also
taken up some of the complications within the cosmopolitan' in "Pluralism, The Cosmopolitan and the
Avant-Garde" in my Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde. London: Routledge, 1991, pp. 131-143.
14 I have taken up the question of the relationship between design and appearance via an engagement with
the issues surrounding the diagram. The diagram demands that the question of style be maintained. Once
its presence as a question, with all the implications that such a designation entails, falls from view-, then this
turns architecture back into abstract formalism. What makes this formalism distinct from other formalisms
is the nature of its geometry. See my "On the Image of Different lines: Working Notes," in Zaha Hadid
and Patrick Schumacher (eds). Latent Utopias: Experiments within Contemporary Architecture. Wiem
Springer. 2002, pp. 18-23.