AT THE FOOT OF THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS this school wanted to carry forward what some would consider a local tradition loosely understood as Craftsman—locally sourced materials, “honest” construction, regional sympathies. (Foothill Country Day School, Claremont, CA).
In the 20th century, we witnessed a battle within all the arts about whether art was pretending, playing or plying the truth. In painting, we got the fight over whether it was truthful to create illusions (pictures) or better to just let the paint be itself—its patterns, texture, shapes. It began to feel as if it were more honest to see in how the painting looked how it was made. Illusion was fakery and in something of a leap of logic fueled by ideology and disseminated by propaganda suddenly therefore untruthful.
ARGUMENTS ABOUT WALLPAPER during the industrial revolution and with the arrival of art history, fueled a hyper self-conscious and moralistic discourse on “good” design and “authentic” art in the 20th century. (A.W.N. Pugin wallpaper design, left, Jackson Pollock painting, right).
19th CENTURY FRENCH THEORIST Viollet-le-Duc (who built the spire on Notre Dame Cathedral that burned to the ground in 2019) admired Gothic architecture for the way it expressed how it was built. He envisioned how a new material, steel, would and should be employed in that same spirit.
It might have surprised those who declared in the middle of the 20th century that abstract painting was the only authentic and authentically American Art of This Century (as Peggy Guggenheim put it in the naming of her gallery) that the ideal of abstraction-- two dimensional imagery that did not pretend to be anything else-- had its roots in 19th century Victorian arguments about wallpaper. Design theorists like A.W.N Pugin and Owen Jones argued that it was not authentic to make something that did not look like how it was made nor to print or weave the illusion of flowers and leaves on flat walls and carpets you walk on (although apparently no problem with paper on walls and carpets on floors).
STRAIGHTFORWARD STRUCTURAL EXPRESSION in modern architecture had its ideological roots in the Victorian admiration for Gothic architecture. (Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris; Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mies van der Rohe, upper right; Case Study House, Pierre Koenig, Los Angeles, CA lower left).
THE 19th CENTURY ENGLISH THEORIST A.W.N. PUGIN promoted medieval art, craft and architecture as the only legitimate and morally sound architecture from which to draw inspiration in the industrial era. This initiated the Arts and Crafts movement that made its way across the Anglo-Saxon world and into southern California.
Architecture experienced a similar trajectory, beginning in the Victorian era with theorists like Viollet le Duc and William Lethaby all of whom argued for the moral superiority of Gothic architecture. Why Gothic? It was associated with Christian values (as we would say today) and you could see in how it looked how it was built. Flying buttresses and ribbed vaults held the buildings up and except for some obviously applied ornament that was all there was to it. It was honest. Besides, they were built by men not machines, a preoccupation of the Victorian era which coincided with the first industrial revolution when manufacturing seemed to some to threaten the honesty of craftsmanship.
PROMOTED AS HONEST the iconic Craftsman movement in southern California was like the so-called Spanish Colonial style almost entirely imported. (La Purisima Mission support building, Lompoc, CA 1700s, above; Gamble House, Greene and Greene, Pasadena, CA below).
ADOBE CONSTRUCTION, essentially dried mud bricks, is a type of construction that could legitimately claim to be indigenous to the southwest.
If there is a moralistic undertone in how we talk about contemporary architecture now, we inherited it from the Victorians who passed it on to the European modernists who, to this day, remain our go-to frame of reference when we talk about authentic and honest design. First came the English in the persons of Pugin, Lethaby and Owens, then Loos, an Austrian who admired the English, then Wright, a Victorian if ever there was one, then Charles Jeanneret, Van der Rohe and so on.
STIPPED DOWN WHITEWASHED MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE feels more at home in southern California than northern Europe (Villa Karma and Villa Muller by Austrian architect Adolf Loos left; Miltimore House and Raymond House by southern Californian architect Irving Gill, right).
THINGS GET TWISTED when a modernist villa in Austria has more in common with a California Mission in both look and ethos, while a Craftsman house in southern California looks more like an Austrian chalet.
In Southern California, we saw this play out first with the arrival of the Anglo Saxons from the east coast who imported the American Arts and Crafts movement to Pasadena (Greene brothers and others) from where it spread across the region then the arrival of the Austrians who imported a particularly severe kind of European modernism (Schindler, Neutra and others) which captured the imagination of the WWII generation in the middle of the last century and then (driven by what, honestly, could only be described as nostalgia) their grandchildren in this century.
HAND BUILT WOOD STICK CONSTRUCTION has been the American way since settlers from England first arrived. The Amish who have walked the walk by maintaining that handmade tradition have also had to remove themselves (right or wrong) from the rest of American life. Wood construction made its way to the West in the 19th century even in places where there is no wood.
INDUSTRIALIZED CONSTRUCTION scaled up wood stick construction and decimated vast tracks of undisturbed land in southern California.
WHAT PASSES AS CRAFTSMAN now the Greene brothers would barely recognize. A few cynically conceived signifiers are sufficient to telegraph thematic reference to a tradition.
The Craftsman movement that flourished at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains manifested a particularly American (Protestant, Episcopalian, Methodist, Mennonite, Amish) version of that Victorian hand--wringing about authentic construction and design. The Greene brothers designed and then built the Gamble House mostly by hand (and mostly in wood). You saw in how it was made and how it was designed. This architecture took hold here because the time was right—it coincided with the surge of Victorians into the West.
THE HAZARDS OF MORALISM GONE AWRY were beautifully rendered in Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographical film about his childhood under the thumb of an oppressive minister step-father who saw the artistic imagination as sinful diversion.( “True Principles” by A.W.N. Pugin upper left; “Ornament and Crime” by Adolf Loos, lower left; “Fanny and Alexander” by Ingmar Bergman, right).
European modernism, on the other hand, took hold mostly because the place was right. It was more at home here where the geography and climate are more astringent than flowery Bavaria and because some of them (those by Irving Gill, for example) look like our own ancient vernacular, the adobe construction of the indigenous peoples of the southwest later white washed by the Spaniards (who also added a little Baroque embellishment from home).
EVERY SURFACE in this lobby is an applied finish that indicates a material or scene that is not there. (UCLA UNEX Administration Headquarters, Westwood, CA).
WOOD PANELING even if real wood is nevertheless a veneer frequently applied to a wall not made of wood—a tradition going back centuries including medieval and Victorian times. Does it make a difference if as in this case it’s printed wallpaper to look like wood veneer? (UCLA UNEX Administration Headquarters, Westwood, CA).
There is more irony than authenticity at play here. Stripped down, white-washed buildings in northern Europe betrayed modernism’s intellectual and romantic regard for the ancient vernacular traditions of the Mediterranean but they were out of place in northern Europe. Whereas, American Craftsman houses betrayed the Victorians’ intellectual and romantic regard for the medieval vernacular traditions of northern Europe and would look more at home there (where it rains there are forests and lots of wood).
NESTLED IN THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS This new school building seeks to harmonize with and even disappear into its semi-pastoral setting in the hills overlooking the San Fernando valley. The wood slats are wood printed aluminum. (Mirman School for Gifted Children, Los Angeles, CA).
THE HILLS ABOVE MALIBU overlooking the Pacific Ocean are astringent and wind swept, and often shrouded in fog. The selection of materials and finishes in this room are meant to reflect that environment. (SMMUSD Malibu High School proposal, Malibu, CA).
Commercialized and industrialized construction has long since diluted the purity of those brief moments in southern California history and we cannot relive them. Conversely, were we honest with ourselves we would cease to pretend that those experiences never happened but rather absorb them and learn from them. We would ditch the moralism and instead playfully, truthfully embrace who we are and the way we build buildings now to create an architecture that is wholly our own.
THE CITY OF CLAREMONT sits in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley which forms a rugged, arid and characteristically Western context within which this new school building will situate. The wood surfaces are wood printed porcelain tile (Foothill Country Day School, Claremont, CA).