ARCH 639.600 FALL 2014. Review3_Rowe_Character and Composition

Review3_Rowe_Character and Composition
Yingzi

In the late eighteenth century, there was an explosion of architectural thoughts and ideas. “New experiences were stimulated by the chaos, new energies released by the confusion; both by arbitrary choice and pressure of circumstances, new conceptions of form were generated”. Driven by this ideological trend, Colin Rowe thought it to be in great sense to find the origins of some of the more significant attitudes on these new conceptions.  

Thus, two architectural vocabularies, character and composition, which attracted most major critical interest among the architectural profession are proposed by Rowe in this article and a discussion are made on the vicissitudes of them and some other related vocabularies in the nineteenth century.

According to Rowe, a successful building should be organized by good composition and simultaneously infused with appropriate character. And the presence of both of them at the same time is not guaranteed, since neither of them could automatically generate the other. Composition is an organization principal, or a movement in form, while character is “the impression of artistic individuality and the symbolic or functional expression of the purpose for which the building was constructed”. To better understand the compositional and characteristic beauty, two houses (Woolley Park and Endsleigh) are taken Rowe takes as the examples to indicate the character transformation in different buildings that even the same building type. Woolley Park shows typicality rather than character and is limited by certain irreducible formal restrictions. Endsleigh, however, is full of character in its naturalistic charm and in its features that conveying expression of purpose, such as roof, chimneys and porch. It is a kind of revolt against tradition and the “typical”.

Picturesque then was introduced and became popular during 1800 and 1830. However it was later found to be “emphasizing the pleasure of the eye, rather than the rational existence of the object”. And Gothic Revival was criticized for its “painful sense of unreality” as well as eclectic picturesque. So, something real was demanded by Cockerell as a new meaning of character.The sense of unreality make me think of gingerbread of structures, redundant elements, medley elevation styles. And the idea of "real", I think, lies on the necessity and logically explanation rather the taste and caprice. 

In late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the movement of modern architecture generated some themes in design like simplicity, true material, form of purpose, machine aesthetic. However, some of the designs are so neutral, objective and standardized that lose the character related to local culture. We can't tell the uniqueness of the architecture that it could be put in any place in the world, which is boring in some extend. These may be the factors later contribute to the rise of post modernism, which aims to preserve pre-modern elements.