What is Architecture?
What is architecture? This simple question was posed by my professor during my first architecture class at Columbia. After the whirlwind of Commencement, I find myself once again returning to the question that started it all.
Simple question, complicated answer. What is architecture? It all begins with a building constructed for a purpose out of specific materials, yes, but what makes a building architecture? A cathedral and a bike shed are both buildings constructed for a purpose out of materials. What makes one architecture and the other, well, not?
The manipulation of nature, technology and the incorporation of rituals, the way a structure relates to its surroundings – these are all part and parcel of architecture. From the simplest Paleolithic hut made of humble materials to the tallest of steel and glass superstructures rising two thousand feet in the air, architecture exists in a myriad of forms, all stemming from a collaboration between human creativity and technology resulting in the ultimate expression of form following function. The clarity with which an architectural team expresses these ideals is the difference between the cathedral and the bike shed.
Reading Room of the Bibliotèque Nationale, Paris as it looks today (image courtesy of Architectural Digest, 2017)
A monument to the printed book, Henri Labrouste’s reading room at the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris is an apt example of form following function via the innovations of modern technology. Built at the height of the industrial revolution in the mid-19th-century, Labrouste’s reading room exploits the qualities of cast iron, a new material of the time, to express the structure’s beauty, strength and purpose. The domes and arches of the white, enameled ceiling appear to balloon above the impossibly slender Greco-gothic columns which provide support below. The domes’ glass oculi ribbed with slim iron bands bring light into the space, which reflects upon the pale grey, red and gold color scheme - newly cleaned in time for its inauguration as the library of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, the room reflects shadowless light upon the books and the people reading them below.
Drawing of the Reading Room's inauguration, as published in Le Monde, Paris 1868
The structure simultaneously connects to an ancient sacred and contemporary civic past. Beyond the obvious nod to French sacred gothic architecture, the room's open space divided by double rows of columns evokes the ancient temple architecture of Paestum, whose doric Temple of Hera I employed the same interior program in its cella.
Temple of Hera I, Paestum (c. 550 bce)
Labrouste's use of double barrel vaults and domes in the reading room's ceiling evoke Paris' more contemporary Palais de Justice - the redesign of which caused Labrouste to take 2nd place in the Grand Prix d'Ecole des Beaux Arts, losing to one of his fellow students. Its reconstruction completed in 1868 (the same year Labrouste's structure was inaugurated), the Palais de Justice's influence can certainly be seen in Labrouste's use of similar architectural elements.
Palais de Justice, Paris (c. 1240, reconstruction 1857-1868) (image courtesy of gettyimages)
Slender columns, ribs and wrought filigree bands married with ancient and contemporary architectural elements - Labrouste employed iron as a techtonic expression of material, methods and history, manifesting an architectural mode both practical and symbolic; a new interpretation unique to its time.