Form & Barbarism

Viollet Le Duc restored this donjon in the mid-1800s - the original dated back, probably, to the reign of Enguerrand VII at the end of the 1300s. Viollet made it popular (and accessible) although his method might, today, be frowned upon - in any case, we owe to him this delightful set of plans and section. The massive base of the tower gives way to a filigree of gothic arches towards the top, It is a weird hybrid of Scottish castle and French cathedral which, tectonically, makes perfect sense.

The tower was destroyed by the German army during the first World War, in 1917. It took 28 tons of cheddite to blow it up for no better reason than they could just do it and that it would shock people. People were suitably shocked and declared the ruins a monument against barbarism. 99 years afterwards, the story is forgotten, and we still act surprised when we hear that cultural heritage has been destroyed as act of warfare. In fact there's nothing new about it. The Chateau de Coucy has become another cute picture on Pinterest, filed under 'poche plan', 'thick walls', or 'quirky old buildings' - right where one day we'll find all the contemporary acts of destruction that might, one day, be forgotten.

I am not sure if this is a sour story, or if it is sweet - as architecture, form, and beauty did prevail after all.

A Timepiece in the form of a Tower

The Tower of the Winds is a timepiece in the form of a building. Vitruvius names Andronicus of Cyrrhus, an expert of astronomy hailing from Macedonia, as its author. Andronicus is recorded as the author of other sundials, including that of the Sanctuary of Poseidon on the island of Tinos, and is probably an actual historical figure who doubled here as architect and technical consultant. Varro writes about the tower around 50 BCE but it is not clear when exactly it had been completed; if it dated to that period, it would mean it belonged to the building programme of the new Roman colonial agora. If we have to agree with Hermann Kienast, who places it about a century earlier, it would have, interestingly, predated the Roman project. All authors however agree on its purpose; the Tower worked as sundial and was topped by a triton-shaped weather vane. Its octagonal plan is a reference to the eight main winds embodied by wind-gods in Greek mythology. The building still stands, but as it has been reused for different purposes in the last 2000 years, it is impossible to reconstruct its original interior and the waterclock that occupied it. In The Antiquities of Athens (1762) the section shows an empty, rather blank space, and only in the plan we see a hint of the machines that would have occupied it originally. It is indeed thanks to this book that the Tower became a popular example of classical architecture; until then, most architects based themselves on Italian examples. John Stuart and Nicholas Revett were the first to publish an extensive report on Greek ruins and the pages they dedicated to the Tower are still compelling today for their clean graphics and fascinating subject matter.

Plan of the Tower of the Winds from Revett and Stuart.

The partnership of Revett and Stuart is the stuff of picaresque novels: while Nicholas Revett (1720-1804) was your typical British gentleman amateur on the Grand Tour, John Stuart's origins were anything but aristocratic. He was in fact the son of a sailor, gifted with unique visual talents; a former painter of fans, he eked out a living in Italy as tourist guide until the fateful meeting with Revett. Eventually, the two would return home to publish their opus magnus and Stuart, nicknamed 'Athenian', would enjoy a couple of colourful decades dividing himself between prestigious design commissions and a rowdy private life (it seems its love of booze and young wenches often stood in the way of completing lucrative jobs). In any case, the book is still today a source of delight: in the case of the Tower of the winds, they represent the building with crisp architectural projections - plan, section, and elevation - without its context. The elevation emphasizes the contrast between the ornate upper part of the tower, and the plainness of its smooth pentelic marble bottom half.

Elevation of the Tower of the Winds.

In the elevation one can also see the sundials etched below the frieze. While the interior presents doric features, the exterior is corinthian. However, the choice of representing plan section and elevation is also symptomatic of the fact that here Revett and Stuart are not simply portraying the building, but rather attempting a reconstruction following literary sources such as Varro and Vitruvius. By the mid-1700s, in fact, the porticoes did not exist anymore, and neither did the bronze weather vane. The authors of the Antiquities show us the actual conditions of the buildings in a perspective view that is a more faithful depiction of the building at the time of their visit.

Vitruvius' obsession with the link between time and space, architecture and calendars, is well known; in Book 1 of De Architectura Andronicus is mentioned with the implicit understanding that he was an unrivalled maestro of clock-building, but Vitruvius also discusses other examples closer to home, including one in Rome, a tower with 12 sides instead of 8, to match a different system of categorization of winds.

After the publication of Revett and Stuart's antiquities, the tower became a popular archetype and was widely copied - there is, for instance, an almost literal copy in Oxford, along with many variations and versions throughout the continent.

An astronomer, an adventurer, and an aristocrat: ironically, none of the men who built this tower and gave it a second life was an architect.

Architecture Elsewhere

Just last week the Architectural Association announced the winners of the competition for the new Wakeford Hall to be built within Hooke Park, the AA's stunning forest retreat. As we know, the most radical projects rarely take place nr. 1 - but they do, and this time they did, get recognition. In this case we're talking about Elsewhere, whose entry is without doubts the standout project between the four finalists. Elsewhere is headed by John Ng, who has been teaching at the AA since 2012; John's profound understanding of the school, its culture, its quirks, and its uniqueness is what makes this project not only an exuberant and beautiful architectural gift, but also, a celebration of all the AA stands for. The project is constructed as a triptych of three 'experiments' of different duration, a term for the loos (see image above), two years for the library, 56 years for the lecture hall. The loos become an occasion of material experimentation as the students play at building and rebuilding them with ephemeral enclosures. The idea is pure tongue-in-cheek AA, and yet, beyond the irony there is a clear, extreme idea of what architecture is: it's about society (being alone - or not), form (being round, being blue, being pink, being square), and shit (being mortal).

It is also a veiled homage to some of the people who made the AA great in the past: a new City of the Captive Globe, irreverently mixed with Tschumi's La Villette's folies. And the whole project - consciously or not - reads as a fresh re-take on the two best entries of the famous park competition of the 1980s. What if Hooke park is not a park, but, in itself, an event, a project that keeps renewing itself every term, every two years, every century?

In my valley in the Alps the most important religious festival of the year is the feast of St. Bartholomew; the villagers (who to this day remain more pagan than Christian) celebrate it with a bonfire competition that is closer to Beltane than the Church of Rome might really like. The winner is not the largest bonfire, but the most elaborate, the most beautiful, the most poetic. In short, it is all about architecture. An architecture built to be set on fire. Similarly, Elsewhere's toilets are set on fire on Graduation night. 

Experiment 2: the two-year library

A library in the form of a forest, and a lecture hall that is a gigantic topiary. The other two slices of the triptych are just as good as the first but we will try not to divulge too many secrets here in case Elsewhere might want to build or publish the project in the near future... which, we can only say, we hope it will be the case.

Elsewhere's work is particularly refreshing in a panorama where it seems that form and content are destined to become opposites both in practice and academia. Their work defies categories: it is socially militant, moulded as it is on an actual project of life before anything else, and yet extremely precise in terms of its aesthetic qualities, down to the graphics and composition of their drawings. The project for Wakeford Hall is very contemporary in its language and materials, and yet beyond its delight in new technologies, it is also clearly the project of architects who master the classical tradition and understand how to play with proportion and symmetry. This formal control is, again, very rare, and it is what makes the whole Elsewhere website a treasure trove of ideas: http://www.architecture-elsewhere.com/

The triptych is also, perhaps, a cautionary tale on the state of architectural education today - from the loos-as-maquettes, to the library which, as the text says: 'may not be very warm, so it is a good idea not to give very long lectures'.