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Of stylised species and specious styles

a
Amy Kulper
a
University of Michigan, USA
Published online: 01 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: Amy Kulper (2006) Of stylised species and specious styles, The Journal of Architecture,
11:4, 391-406, DOI: 10.1080/13602360601037693

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Of stylised species and
specious styles
Amy Kulper
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In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity is
the essential. In all important matters, style, not
sincerity, is the essential.
Oscar Wilde, 1894
To what do we attribute the current profusion of
biomorphic forms in our discipline? When architec-
tural practices employ versioning or rapid prototyp-
ing technologies, how do we account for the
impetus to represent development? When imple-
menting a parametric design, why do architects will-
ingly cede creative control to recombinant
geometries? If rapid prototyping imagines the con-
flation of design and fabrication through automated
manufacturing, what are the disciplinary con-
sequences of these compressed processes of archi-
tectural design and production? Lurking behind all
of these questions is the spectre of the species-
style metaphor, and understanding the cultural
conditions under which it was first formulated and
propagated will shed some light on current architec-
tural practices and predilections. To accomplish this,
we must return to the nineteenth century.
The year is 1851, and as visitors crowd into
Paxton’s Crystal Palace to attend the Great Exhibi-
tion, they witness a quite literal form of cultural
transparency. Housed within this extensive glass
wrapper, visitors find every sort of technological,
ethnographic, artistic, agricultural, and geological
exhibit imaginable (Fig. 1). For those visitors
curious about the odd juxtaposition of sculpture
and soil sample, painting and pigeon, maquette
and machine, a glance at the official guidebook
offers this explanation: ‘Within the Palace itself,
# 2006 The Journal of Architecture
391
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University of Michigan, USA
we have been enabled to remark the works of
man, and the gradual development of his ideas,
especially in Art, leading to a variety of so-called
“styles”, which answer in a measure to the varied
“species” of Divinely created life.’1 The analogy of
species and style in this description is the result of
an ongoing process of immanentisation, in which
external nature is conflated with human inner
nature through the identification of common vital
tendencies. This conflation ultimately fosters the
human appropriation of the natural world’s creative
or generative capacities.2 This paper will begin with
a cursory description of certain formative moments
in the development of the species-style metaphor
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it will
identify and describe operative categories of the
metaphor—specifically, ‘stylised species’ and ‘spe-
cious styles’—and consider how the work of Gott-
fried Semper, Georges Cuvier, Owen Jones, Ernst
Haeckel, and Karl Blossfeldt epitomises these dispa-
rate classifications; it will examine the role of the
species-style metaphor in Victor Horta’s architecture;
and it will conclude with some speculations about
the impact of this organic metaphor on contempo-
rary architectural discourse and practice.
How did the species-style metaphor become such
a commonplace by the middle of the nineteenth
century? For the answer to this question we would
have to go back to 1750 when, prior to writing his
seminal Geschichte der Kunst Alterthums (an
account of the history of Greek art), Johann
Joachim Winckelmann spent four years poring
over Georges Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle. What did
1360–2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360601037693
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Of stylised species and

specious styles
Amy Kulper
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Figure 1. Taxonomy of
the Great Exhibition of
1851; from: 1851 Great
Exhibition Official
Catalogue with
Alphabetical and
Classified Index and
Price Lists (London,
William Clowes & Sons,
1851). Photograph
credit: Research Library,
The Getty Research
Institute, Los Angeles,
California (93-B19896).

Winckelmann, an historian of ancient art, glean from
Buffon’s detailed botanical accounts? From Buffon he
acquired a meticulously historicised sense of nature
and natural species, which he developed into an
equally historicised sense of style. In the introduction
to his text, Winckelmann writes: ‘The history of art is
intended to show the origin, progress, change, and
downfall of art, together with the different styles of
nations, periods and artists, and to prove the whole
as far as it is possible, from the ancient monuments
now in existence.’3 Implicit in Winckelmann’s descrip-
tion of the origin, progress, change, and downfall of
artistic style, is a parallel notion of biological change:
birth, teleological development, transformation, and
death. Clearly, this enterprise involves the appropria-
tion of the idea of the lifespan of the biological
species and its application to artistic style. Winckel-
mann’s emphasis on proof is also imported from
natural history where it is used to establish coherence
or identity between an individual specimen and the
species to which it belongs. Ultimately, the absolute
certainty of this coherence between specimen and
species, between art object and style, led Winckel-
mann to speculate about the possibility of style
being biologically transmitted.4
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe equally contributed
to the formulation of the species-style metaphor in
the eighteenth century. Between 1786 and 1788,

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he traveled to Italy where he studied the art and
architecture of classical antiquity as well as botany.
In an essay published the year after he returned
entitled ‘Simple Imitation of Nature, Manner,
Style’, Goethe’s aesthetic and scientific interests
merged. Concerning the visual arts, he writes:
It is obvious that . . . an artist can only become
greater and more significant if he adds to his
talents the expertise of a botanist; if he knows
the influence of the different plants, from the
roots upwards, and their continuing and mutual
effect; if he observes and reflects on the succes-
sive development of the leaves, flowers, sex
organs, fruit and the new seed. Then he will not
simply demonstrate his taste by his choice of
subject, but he will astonish and enlighten us by
his accurate representation of these character-
istics: and in this sense it could be said that he
has formed a style.5
It is significant that Goethe turns to botany in his
description of style, not only because he is propaga-
ting the species-style metaphor, but also because he
brings to architectural discourse the possibility of
considering the development of form, for which
he coined the term ‘morphology’. In this sense,
Goethe provides one of the earliest examples of
explicit morphological thinking about architecture:
he redefines style as the accurate representation of
development.6 How does Goethe’s morphological
definition of style manifest itself aesthetically? If
we consider his notion of the ‘poetic moment’ in
which he theorises that what is useful in one histori-
cal period becomes representational in the next, we
witness an historical account of style that owes its
confusion of causation with temporal succession to
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biological discourse.7 For Goethe, the poetic
moment accounts for the imitation of the language
of wood construction in ancient stone temples, and
proffers a theory of stylistic development that
cogently explains this phenomenon. When applied
to natural history, Goethe’s morphology eschews
teleology; the development of form is not to be
understood as development towards an explicit
goal. In fact, he claims that teleology has obstructed
the progress of natural history, although he is sym-
pathetic to the human desire to ascribe intention
to nature’s actions: ‘Moreover, in himself and
others he justifiably puts the greatest value on
actions and deeds which are intentional and purpo-
seful. It follows that he will attribute intent and
purpose to nature, for he will be unable to form a
larger concept of nature than of himself.’8 For
Goethe, one of the great advantages of morphology
is its capacity to operate independently—it does not
belong to chemistry, or biology, or botany, or art
history—but it establishes an autonomous vantage
point of formal development that potentially
benefits each of these disciplines.9 Finally, Goethe
positions morphology as a critique of vitalist ten-
dencies in the sciences. The formation and trans-
formation of organic bodies is not attributed to
the actions of a vital inner source, but to the recipro-
city of intrinsic forces and extrinsic conditions.
This brief examination of Winckelmann and
Goethe supplies some of the necessary background
to an understanding of the species-style metaphor in
the nineteenth century. At this juncture, it is impor-
tant to ask how this conceptual conflation operates
metaphorically. Paul Ricoeur argues that metaphor is
the result of the tension between two opposed
 394
Of stylised species and
specious styles
Amy Kulper
interpretations in an utterance.10 In the case of the
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species-style metaphor, the opposed interpretations
would be the diversity of species produced by
nature’s generative capacity versus the variety of
styles produced by humanity’s creative genius. Also
essential to the metaphor for Ricoeur is the ‘appear-
ance of kinship where ordinary vision does not per-
ceive any relationship.’11 With regard to the
species-style metaphor, this kinship is the tacit
belief that nature’s generative capacity and human-
ity’s creative genius are similar productive processes.
Ricoeur concludes, ‘A metaphor, in short, tells us
something new about reality.’12 At its best, the
species-style metaphor elucidates the similarities
and differences between techniques for natural
and cultural production and between the classifica-
tory schemas for objects of nature and culture.
If species refers to the appearance or outward
form of an organism as the criterion for identity
and classification, and style emerges from a rhetori-
cal context in which it refers to the internal coher-
ence of nature, then how do we arrive at the
terminology of ‘stylised species’ and ‘specious
styles’?13 With specious styles, the similarities
between two opposed interpretations are seized
upon at the expense of their respective differences.
The metaphor tells us nothing new about reality;
in fact, it is a dead metaphor by virtue of its reified
meaning and frequent usage. The conflation of
species and style is due to the historical process of
immanentisation in which style loses its rhetorical
connotation as the internal coherence of nature
and comes to be understood as the internal coher-
ence of human inner nature. This shift renders
style a contingency of personal preference and
individual taste. Simultaneously, style lost the
ethical content of its rhetorical meaning, in which
acting in accordance with nature meant possessing
the knowledge to act appropriately in a given situ-
ation. When style began increasingly to emulate
species in the nineteenth century, it merely took on
the appearance of an accordance with nature.14
The examination of a handful of late nineteenth
century architects and naturalists, including
Semper, Blossfeldt, Jones and Haeckel, will lend cre-
dence to the above categorisations of stylised
species and specious styles. Gottfried Semper, who
designed the Canadian, Danish, Egyptian and
Swedish displays for the Crystal Palace, was no
stranger to the issues of classification and display
raised in the exhibition organisation. While studying
in Paris between 1826 and 1830, he often visited the
Jardin des Plantes and became particularly fasci-
nated by the displays of fossils and skeletons
arranged by the great naturalist Georges Cuvier.
Cuvier’s contribution to biological taxonomy is the
assertion that the classification of organisms
should be based upon their function, their form
being simply a result of that function. In a lecture
given in 1853, Semper speculates about the possible
applications of this principle to architecture: ‘Such a
method, similar to the one followed by Baron Cuvier,
when applied to art and especially to architecture,
would at least help to gain a clear survey of the
whole field and perhaps even the basis of a theory
of style and a kind of Topica or method of invention,
which could lead to some knowledge of the natural
process of invention.’15
Thus, for Semper, Cuvier’s classification according
to the behaviour and function of species becomes
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the inspiration for a theory of architectural style Figure 2. Plate 96 from

linked explicitly to natural operations of production. Karl Blossfeldt’s
Urformen der Kunst
When Semper defines style as ‘. . . the accord of an
illustrating a common
object with its genesis, and with all preconditions monkshood plant
and circumstances of its becoming’, he re-orients enlarged six times;
the species-style metaphor toward issues of emer- from: Art Forms in
gence.16 Thus, in preserving the tensional play of Nature, Karl Blossfeldt
(London, A. Zwemmer,
the species-style metaphor, Semper’s contributions
1929). Photograph
fall under the category of stylised species. Semper credit: # 2006 Karl
engages two opposed interpretations: the ordering Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann
of species according to their respective functions U. Jürgen Wilde, Köln/
and the ordering of architectural style according to Artists Rights Society
(ARS), NY.
function or type. He intuits the appearance of
kinship by grasping parallel processes of natural
and cultural invention. In his hands, the species-
style metaphor reveals something new about
reality; specifically, that both species and style can
encompass and accommodate formal emergence.
Karl Blossfeldt, a botanist who began teaching in
Berlin in 1898, organised a plate archive of plant
photographs from which he made prints for instruc-
tional use. In 1928, when he published the first
120 plates of Urformen der Kunst, a collection of
plant specimens to be shared with fellow botanists,
he could not have anticipated their tremendous we remember that [Paul] Klee and, even more
impact on aesthetic discourse. His photographic [Vassily] Kandinsky, worked for so long on the elab-
reproductions, like this image of a common oration of forms which only the intervention of the
monkshood plant, were enlarged anywhere from microscope could—brusquely and violently—reveal
three to fifteen times their original size, replicating to us, we notice that these enlargements of
the experience of viewing botanical specimens the plants also contain original stylistic forms
under a microscope (Fig. 2). The premise of these [Stilformen].’17 In Blossfeldt’s work Benjamin is
photographs is that to see nature magnified is to seeing original stylistic forms within the magnifi-
be privy to its inner workings, the vital spirit that cation of the species. Here, the species-style meta-
animates its creative process. In a 1928 review of phor introduces vitalism to aesthetic discourse and
Blossfeldt’s work, Walter Benjamin remarks: ‘When offers the possibility that original stylistic forms
 396
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specious styles
Amy Kulper
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need not reside in hypothetical historical precedents
such as the primitive hut, so central to eighteenth
century debates on the origins of architecture, but
are, rather, innate, acting as stylistic catalysts to
developing forms. Blossfeldt’s photographs preserve
the tension of the species-style metaphor, and in this
sense, would be categorised as stylised species. The
two opposed interpretations of the metaphor in his
work are the scientific and aesthetic fetishism of
organic form. Microscopic magnification reveals a
kinship where ordinary vision does not perceive a
relationship: in this case, the potential for vitalism
to have both scientific and aesthetic applications.
Finally, the metaphor reveals something new about
reality when it posits the possibility that both
natural and cultural objects contain original stylistic
forms [Stilformen].
To the species-style metaphor, Owen Jones, the
architect who designed the colour scheme of the
interior structure for the Crystal Palace, contributes
the idea that nature is not the only material suitable
for taxonomic description and organisation.
Through Jones’s publications the possibility of a cul-
tural taxonomy emerged. In the illustrations of his
1865 book The Grammar of Ornament, Jones does
for ornamental style what Buffon did for botanic
species. But there is a disparity between the illus-
trations and the text of Jones’s book. Jones cautions
his reader: ‘The principles discoverable in the works
of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is
taking the ends for the means.’18 Even though the
text explicitly argues against the use of his plates
as a visual lexicon, the representational conventions
he employs for the visual display of historical orna-
ment—gridded pages of isolated samples—firmly
entrenches the publication in an extensive tradition
of pattern books (Fig. 3). However, the final plates
in the collection deviate from the rigid taxonomic
survey of ornament from the past. Under the
rubric of ‘Leaves and Flowers from Nature’, Jones
includes ornament of his own design (Fig. 4). To
the casual observer, these plates more closely
approximate botanical illustrations than ornamental
samples. Rendered as line drawings in a style popu-
larised by the eighteenth century naturalist Carl
Linnaeus, Jones’s ornament consists of numbered
specimens depicted in exacting detail in full-page
layouts, emancipating them from the represen-
tational conventions of the pattern book. The
realism of Jones’s renderings, their inherent lack of
ornamental flourish, closes the gap between the dis-
parate realms of science and aesthetics. Here, style is
species. The species-style metaphor has elided to
become a tautology.
In an 1879 text entitled The Evolution of Man, the
German zoologist Ernst Haeckel advances what
would later be referred to as the recapitulation
theory.19 The theory, which holds that the embryo-
nic development of an organism encapsulates the
evolutionary descent of the species, is both an
attempt to historicise biology and to theorise
development. In his 1899 book Kunstformen der
Natur, Haeckel includes a plate that gives aesthetic
expression to his scientific theory.20 Plate 95
(Fig. 5) illustrates the recapitulation theory by seam-
lessly juxtaposing embryonic forms of contemporary
echinoderms with fossilised echinoderms of the
Palaeozoic era. In a single image, Haeckel conflates
the development of a single organism within the
species with the evolution of the entire species.
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Figure 3. Plate VII from

Owen Jones’s The
Grammar of Ornament
depicting Egyptian
ornament in a typical
taxonomic format;
from: The Grammar of
Ornament (New York,
Dover Publications, Inc.,
1987). Photograph
credit: # The Grammar
of Ornament/Owen
Jones/Dover
Publications, Inc.
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Figure 4. Plate XCVII

from Owen Jones’s The
Grammar of Ornament
depicting Jones’s own
ornamental designs
under the title ‘Leaves
and Flowers from
Nature’; from: The
Grammar of Ornament
(New York, Dover
Publications, Inc.,
1987). Photograph
credit: # The Grammar
of Ornament/Owen
Jones/Dover
Publications, Inc.

Figure 5. Plate 95 from

Ernst Haeckel’s
Kunstformen der Natur
illustrating Haeckel’s
recapitulation theory;
from: Art Forms in
Nature (New York,
Dover Publications, Inc.,
1974). Photograph
credit: # Art Forms in
Nature/Ernst Haeckel/
Dover Publications, Inc.
The plates from this book attest to the proximity of Medusa, in Jena. Similarly, René Binet appropriated
the scientific and the aesthetic at the close of the Haeckel’s radiolarian with his monumental entrance
nineteenth century: both de-contextualise their gate for the Paris World Exposition of 1900. These
objects of study; both emphasise form; and both examples fall under the rubric of specious styles.
are interested in questions concerning the gene- The species-style metaphor is once again rendered
ration and development of form. In fact, for a tautology; for Haeckel and Binet, species is style.21
Haeckel the scientific and aesthetic are virtually A closer reading of one body of work, that of the
interchangeable as evidenced by his use of an Belgian art nouveau architect Victor Horta, will
image of a jellyfish with the scientific name expose many nuanced manifestations within the
Toreuma as both Plate 28 in his book, and as an spectrum of possibilities that stretches between sty-
ornamental ceiling motif in his home, the Villa lised species and specious styles in this period. While

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it is clearly Horta’s intention to produce work that
would be classified as stylised species, work that
engages the metaphorical tension between the aes-
thetic and scientific realms, he occasionally falls prey
to the seduction of specious styles.
The hegemony and inevitability of style in Horta’s
work is one intriguing manifestation of the species-
style metaphor. Winckelmann’s aesthetic interpret-
ation of the coherence between species and speci-
men suggests that the species-style metaphor
theorises the part-to-whole relationship in architec-
tural discourse in a way that assures, not only the
dominance of stylistic concerns, but also the very
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inevitability of style itself. In Horta’s work, the coher- Figure 6. Hybrid
ence between the detail and the spatial situation is element from Victor
Horta’s Maison and
informed by the tenets of Gesamtkunstwerk. In a
Atelier (1898 – 1901);
hybrid element from the Maison and Atelier Horta from: Victor Horta,
(1898 –1901), the connectivity of column, light David Dernie (London,
fixture, handrail, armrest, seat back, heating grate Academy Group Ltd,
is purely a result of style, which transcends material 1995). Photograph
credit: Alastair Carew-
and functional differences, yielding a cohesive whole
Cox # 2006 – Horta/
(Fig. 6). While the parts are easily identified and SOFAM – Belgium.
classified, the whole defies such categorisation; it
is more than the sum of its parts. The certitude
that every living thing belongs to a species mandates
that all forms of architectural production exhibit sty-
listic coherence. As a result of the species-style
metaphor, scientific certitude becomes aesthetic
mandate.
Another indication of the species-style metaphor
in Horta’s work resides in his deployment of style
as language. Horta’s position can be located some-
where between Goethe’s assertion of style as a
language that reveals the nature of things, and
Owen Jones’s taxonomy of ornament, which
renders style a de-situated language that can be uni-
versally deployed according to certain grammatical
principles. This sort of Jonesian classificatory think-
ing in Horta’s work is evidenced by a drawing in
his sketchbook depicting the taxonomy of door iron-
mongery used in his various houses, or by the repeti-
tious and almost indiscriminate use of similar
ornamental motifs, such as columns with burgeon-
ing capitals, in vastly different circumstances in his
body of work.
In natural history, at times species are represented
as taxonomies, in which de-contextualised speci-
mens are arranged according to the imposition of
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Figure 7. Winter rational order, and at times species are represented

Garden Mural of Victor in their natural habitats, like the museum diorama,
Horta’s Hôtel Tassel
in which they are situated within their natural
(1893 – 97); from: Victor
Horta, David Dernie environments. Similarly, styles appear in both
(London, Academy de-contextualised taxonomies and situated environ-
Group Ltd, 1995). ments. Horta’s projects run the gamut between
Photograph credit: these two extremes. If we look at his use of orna-
Alastair Carew-Cox #
ment in the Hôtel Tassel (1893 –97), we discover
2006 – Horta/
SOFAM – Belgium. that Horta makes a conscientious effort to deploy
natural ornamental motifs that are appropriate to
their contexts. For example, in the winter garden,
the space for the collection of exotic plant species
and curiosities, Horta uses a repetitious ornamental
motif resembling wallpaper (Fig. 7). Here, the taxo-
nomic referential structure of the space—a space
for collection and display—warrants a repetitive,
de-contextualised ornamental motif. In another
site-specific mural, this one occupying a curved
soffit connecting the mezzanine balcony to the
salon below, the balustrade rotates to accommodate
magic lantern projections, and thus the space is,
programmatically, a space for illusions (Fig. 8).
Horta’s mural also engages in the production of and between ornament and structure, this mural
illusion. Rendered in the same colour as the iron- speaks not only to the stark juxtaposition of the
work of the ground floor structural system, this two enterprises, but suggests a potentially seamless
mural propagates the illusion of a seamless tran- continuity between the beautiful and the useful.
sition from three-dimensional structure to two- Finally, the mural occupying the main stairwell
dimensional decoration. In terms of the overall deserves consideration (Fig. 9). Responding to the
grammar of ornament, Horta allows the ornament programmatic specificity of a stairwell, a place of
of the mural to become frame, imitating and com- movement and ascension, and the locus of the
pleting the logic of the structural system below, mobilised viewer, the generative inner nature of
while programmatically anticipating the frame, this mural resists pictorial capture. The mural reflects
both implied and actual, of the magic lantern the thematic topography of the house, which
projection. Located on the literal threshold moves from the dark, compressed and cavernous
between photographic and architectural illusion, space of the entrance vestibule to the light,

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extended and ethereal space of the first floor
landing. This metaphorical movement from earth
to sky and from darkness to light is depicted in
the mural’s transitions of coloration, density, and
materiality, as the tendrils that extend to the
upper landing seem almost to dissolve or demateria-
lise in the intense light. Thus, we can see that at
times Horta adapts an ornamental motif to the
function or programme of its specific situation
within the house, while at others, he capitulates
to the de-contextualising influence of scientific tax-
onomy; the former is an instance of stylised species,
the latter, an example of specious style.
401
The Journal
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Horta is equally influenced by the species-style Figure 8. Mural viewed
metaphor in his propensity for style to engage incre- from the mezzanine
balcony of Victor
ments of natural development and biological life-
Horta’s Hôtel Tassel
span. If Winckelmann was the first to project (1893 – 97); from: Victor
biological lifespan onto style, while Goethe Horta, David Dernie
equated style with the accurate representation of (London, Academy
development, and Semper claimed that style was Group Ltd, 1995).
Photograph credit:
the accord of an object with its genesis, while
Alastair Carew-Cox #
Haeckel utilised the recapitulation theory as an 2006 – Horta/
occasion to aestheticise development, then it may SOFAM – Belgium.
not be surprising that natural development and bio-
logical lifespan feature prominently in Horta’s work.
But what are their respective roles? In the species-
style analogy, taxonomic schematisations of species
find their corollary in historicist representations of
style, and this is precisely what Horta and his
fellow art nouveau architects sought to avoid. In
choosing nature as their source of inspiration, and
representing the natural as it develops and
emerges, art nouveau practitioners hoped to
eschew the prevalent problems of their day—specifi-
cally, stylistic relativism and historical eclecticism.
One example of Horta’s work that closely resembles
Haeckel’s illustration of his recapitulation theory is
the column detail from the façade of the Hôtel
Tassel. Just as Haeckel brazenly juxtaposes Palaeo-
zoic and contemporary specimens, Horta overtly
positions classical stone columns next to a decidedly
modern curved and riveted iron lintel. Recalling
Goethe’s characterisation of the poetic moment in
which what is useful in one period becomes rep-
resentational in the next, this combination of
modern lintel and ancient column seems to illustrate
a kind of ‘abridged evolution’, akin to Gaston
Bachelard’s definition of the ornamental category
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Of stylised species and

specious styles
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Figure 9. Main stairway development towards an end. The teleological

mural of Victor Horta’s
Hôtel Tassel (1893 – 97);
from: Victor Horta,
David Dernie (London,
Academy Group Ltd,
1995). Photograph
credit: Alastair Carew-
Cox # 2006 – Horta/
SOFAM – Belgium.
of the grotesque.22 What makes this example an
instance of specious style in Horta’s work is that,
like Haeckel, he is concerned primarily with the
appearance of development at the expense of the
behaviour of development.
When style engages issues of natural develop-
ment in nineteenth-century architectural discourse,
the question that is raised is development towards
what? Semper’s adaptation of Cuvier’s functional
classification brought function, programme and
typology to the forefront of architectural interest,
and with this came a teleological inclination—a
tacit assumption that development is always
imperative of style in Horta’s work manifests itself
in the typological consistency of his projects. His
houses, designed for different clients, on different
sites, under different circumstances are possessed
of certain typological consistencies that potentially
render them specious styles. Horta’s repetitive use
of a vertical topography that presents a movement
from darkness to light with a staircase as a central
iconic figure suggests that the answer to the ques-
tion—development to what end?—is a foregone
conclusion. The emergent nature in his domestic
projects repeatedly develops towards an immanent
representation of cosmological transcendence.23
This typological consistency is associated with the
teleological imperative of style in Horta’s work. Its
tendency towards universality, its indifference to
the specific situations of the individual houses,
makes this a specious aspect of Horta’s art
nouveau style.
Finally, the species-style metaphor manifests itself
in Horta’s work by way of a vital impulse. Blossfeldt’s
magnified images of plant specimens call attention
to the migration of vitalism from biological to aes-
thetic discourse. In opposition to mechanistic theo-
ries of development, the vitalists posit an essential
and vital force as the catalyst to all biological trans-
formations. Walter Benjamin likens this to the aes-
thetic Stilformen, or original stylistic forms in which
the vital impulse is located. This vital impulse
informs Horta’s style, specifically his tendency con-
sistently to represent burgeoning or emergent
nature. In his lectures and writing, Horta stresses
the importance of becoming a student of nature
so that one can represent its every nuance and

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stage of development, and although his sketches
prove him to be a man of his word, his architecture
focuses exclusively on emergent natural motifs.24
Horta’s ornamental style captures nature at the
moment of its genesis, the instant when it is ani-
mated by a vital force. To the degree that this rep-
resents Horta’s desire to capture the behaviour of
nature, it is an example of stylised species; to the
extent that it visually codifies the appearance and
behaviour of nature, it is an instance of specious
style.
The species-style metaphor is responsible for
keeping certain parallel questions in the aesthetic
and scientific realms alive; such as, whether style is
based upon external appearance or internal beha-
viour, and whether the identity of a species resides
in its diverse forms or in its various functions. What
is evident from this examination is that the concep-
tual analogy, and ultimately, the conflation of
species and style, engenders a persistent dialectic
in modern architectural discourse that made func-
tion and typology preoccupations of the early twen-
tieth century, and ‘performativity’ and morphology
concerns of the early twenty-first century. As the
species-style metaphor became increasingly
common in the discipline of architecture, however,
the creative tension at the core of the analogous
relationship between the scientific and aesthetic
realms was supplanted by mere affinity: disparate
interpretations became synonymous, and the
species-style metaphor elided to become a tautol-
ogy. This brings us full circle to the contemporary
status of species and style within our discipline. In
this moment of blobs and biomorphic forms, para-
metric modeling and rapid prototyping, stereolitho-
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graphy and selective laser sintering, it is apparent
that species is no longer like style; species is style.
We are awash in buzzwords like forces, dynamics,
performance, emergence, efficiency, and adap-
tation, but as provocative as these terms are, they
seem inseparable from the biomorphic aesthetic
upon whose coattails they first entered the
discipline.
The guidebook to the Crystal Palace described the
‘works of man . . . leading to a variety of so-called
styles’ as they corresponded to the ‘varied species
of Divinely created life.’ In the context of the nine-
teenth century, the species-style metaphor focused
upon ‘what’ nature and culture produce. When con-
sidering the question of species and style in our con-
temporary context, interest has shifted from ‘what’
nature and culture produce, to the ‘how’ of
natural and cultural production. The unrealised
promise of Goethe’s morphology is that it presciently
reflects this shift in interest from the appearance of
the natural to its behaviour. What can contemporary
architectural discourse learn from Goethe’s
morphology?
One of Goethe’s fundamental claims about mor-
phology is that its intention is to portray rather
than explain.25 Morphology did not develop as a
particular science, but as a kind of meta-science in
which representations of development were privi-
leged over explanations of development. Goethe
recognised that species and styles are epistemologi-
cally different, but the meta-category of mor-
phology allowed him to seize upon their
representational similarities. Thus, the discursive,
the logical and the explanatory had no role in his
discussion of style. From Goethe, architectural
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Of stylised species and
specious styles
Amy Kulper
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discourse must learn that when it embraces the mor-
phological, it is not required to capitulate to the logic
and intelligibility of scientific thought. Goethe also
believed that morphology should eschew teleology.
Instinctively he knew that the question of ‘develop-
ment toward what end?’ was too easily and thought-
lessly answered by the production of an image. In
eschewing teleology, Goethe’s morphology avoids
portraying mere appearances or images of species,
and as we have seen in numerous examples, this is
one area in which the species-style metaphor consist-
ently lapses into tautology. From Goethe, architec-
tural discourse must learn that a genuine interest in
morphology engages the representation of change,
and that this representational interest is completely
detached from any biomorphic aesthetic. Finally,
Goethe argues that morphology legitimises itself by
establishing a new vantage point from which form
may be considered: the vantage point of change,
transformation, and development. In this sense, he
is orienting morphology towards the behaviour of
species. From Goethe, architectural discourse must
learn that establishing a new vantage point about
the change, transformation, and development of
form does not mean that interests in flows, forces,
dynamics, adaptation, performance and emergence
should supplant other considerations of spatial
experience; nor does it mean that formal interests
should eclipse all other interests.
This essay began with some speculations about
the impact of the species-style metaphor on
current architectural practices. It will conclude with
a question. How can we as a discipline restore the
metaphorical tension to the species-style analogy;
or, how do we avoid the propagation of specious
styles? In order to address the profusion and ubi-
quity of biomorphic forms, we must shift our
emphasis from the appearance of species to the
behaviour of species. When employing rapid proto-
typing technologies, we must be cognisant of the
distinction between formal iterations and formal
development. Currently, prototypes are generated
through a quasi-scientific process aimed at expand-
ing formal options while excluding authorial intent.
Paradoxically, at the conclusion of this process, the
architect must choose one model, allowing aesthetic
preference to muddy the scientific waters. Framing
the prototypes as developments rather than iter-
ations potentially lends the process an evaluative
structure that is not purely subjective. Parametric
design can reinstate the metaphorical tension to
the species-style comparison by expanding the
field of parameters beyond the information and
recombinant geometries of species, to the constitu-
ents of spatial experience that have traditionally
belonged to style. And finally, the conflation of
design and fabrication through automated manu-
facturing is a practice that appears directly to
emulate nature’s generative capacity, which draws
no such distinction between design and production;
but rather than guaranteeing natural qualities of
emergence, it ensures the cultural commodification
of architecture. Can we observe the possibilities of
architectural form from a new vantage point or are
we resigned to the propagation of specious styles?
Notes and references
1. Great Exhibition Catalogue of 1851, 4 vols, Guide to
the Crystal Palace and Park, volume iv (London,
Crystal Palace Library, 1854), p.104.

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2. In what M.H. Abrams provocatively describes as a
German theory of ‘vegetable genius’, Friedrich
Schelling, in his System of Transcendental Idealism of
1800, suggests that productive activity includes not
only ‘what is generally called art . . . that which is
practised with consciousness, deliberation, and reflec-
tion, and can be taught and learned’, but also that
which cannot ‘be achieved by application or in any
other way, but must be inherited as a free gift from
nature.’ See M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp:
Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1971), p.209.
3. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of the Art of
Antiquity, eds, Julia Bloomfield et al., trs., Harry
F. Mallgrave, Texts and Documents (Los Angeles, The
Getty Research Institute, 2006), p. 71.
4. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Style as Inclusion, Style as Exclusion’, in
Picturing Science, Producing Art, eds, Caroline A. Jones,
Peter Galison (New York, Routledge, 1998), p. 34.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Simple Imitation of
Nature, Manner, Style’, in Goethe on Art, ed., John
Gage (London, Scolar Press, 1980), p.23.
6. Caroline van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century
Architecture: An Inquiry into Its Theoretical and Philo-
sophical Background (Amsterdam, Architectura &
Natura Press, 1994), p.100.
7. The theory of the poetic moment appears in an essay
by Goethe entitled ‘Palladio Architecture’ written in
1795 and published posthumously. Goethe’s theory
ensures the continuity of the qualities and appearance
of architecture, while claiming for architecture an
autonomous aesthetic sensibility. See William
Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems
of Form, Function, and Transformation (New York,
John Wiley & Son, Inc., 1971), p.161. Coleman refers
to the confusion of causation and temporal succession
as the ‘great intellectual prejudice of nineteenth-
century thought.’
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8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe: Scientific
Studies, ed., Douglas Miller, trs., Douglas Miller, 12
vols., vol. 12, Goethe (New York, Suhrkamp Publishers,
1988), p.54. From the essay ‘Toward a General Com-
parative Theory’ written between 1790 and 1794,
and published in 1892: it addresses the problem of
physicotheology.
9. Ibid., p.59. Goethe advances this argument in the essay
‘Observation on Morphology in General’, written in
1795 and published in 1891.
10. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the
Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, Texas Christian
University Press, 1976), p. 50.
11. Ibid., p. 51.
12. Ibid., p. 52.
13. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, ed., G.P. Gould, trs.,
H. Rackham, II vols, The Loeb Classical Library, Book III
(Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1942), pp.7, 25.
Crassus, the protagonist of Cicero’s De Oratore
(55 BC), offers an early formulation of rhetorical style
when he contends that in nature there are ‘a multi-
plicity of things that are different from one another
and yet esteemed as having a similar nature.’ It is
from this context that the definition of style as the
internal coherence of nature is derived.
14. See Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided
Representation: The Question of Creativity in the
Shadow of Production (Cambridge, The MIT Press,
2004), pp. 358 –366.
15. van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architec-
ture: An Inquiry into Its Theoretical and Philosophical
Background, op.cit., p. 228.
16. Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic
Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics: A Handbook for Tech-
nicians, Artists, and Friends of the Arts, eds, Julia
Bloomfield et al., trs, Harry F. Mallgrave and Michael
Robinson, Texts & Documents (Los Angeles, Getty Pub-
lications, 2004), pp. 52 –53.
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17. Walter Benjamin, ‘New Things About Plants—A
Review of Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der Kunst’, in,
Germany: The New Photography 1927 –1933, ed.,
David Mellor (London, Lund Humphries, 1978), p. 21.
18. Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (London, Day
and Son, Limited, 1865), p.8.
19. Ernst Haeckel, The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition
of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylo-
geny, 2 vols (New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1879).
20. Richard Hartmann, ed., ‘Art Forms in Nature: The
Prints of Ernst Haeckel’ (Munich, Prestel-Verlag, 1998).
21. See Robert Proctor’s paper, ‘Architecture from the cell-
soul: René Binet and Ernst Haeckel’, in this issue for a
more thorough discussion of Binet’s appropriation of
Haeckel’s theories.
22. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trs., Maria
Jolas (New York, The Orion Press, 1964), pp. 108 –
09. Bachelard writes: ‘And so, unbridled, bestial day-
dream produces a diagram for a shortened version of
animal evolution. In other words, in order to achieve
grotesqueness, it suffices to abridge evolution.’
23. This version of immanentism corresponds to one of its
most radical manifestations in Husserl’s writing, where
it is posited as transcendence in immanence.
24. In an unpublished manuscript entitled Cours d’anato-
mie of 1921, Horta describes in great detail the need
to study nature in all of its nuanced manifestations:
‘Since then I have studied the life, the sleep, and the
death of plants, animals, and people, with keen inter-
est. How much my vision has broadened I could not
say. From leaves newly unfurled, and growing into
maturity, to those encountered in full bloom, scorched
by the ardour of the sun in high August, to the same
leaves dead of old age in October; from the leaves of
dawn to those of noon, of sunset, and of night. I
have studied all of their countenances with an interest
which, unfortunately, my schedule is chary of letting
me fulfill. See Yolande Oostens-Wittamer, Victor
Horta: L’hôtel Solvay (Louvain-La-Neuve, Institut Supér-
ieur D’Archéologie et D’Histoire de L’Art, 1980), pp.
249– 50.
25. Goethe, Goethe: Scientific Studies, op. cit., p. 57.