Seen through De Stijl

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2005 by Jeremy Melvin

TOWARDS UNIVERSALITY--LE CORBUSIER, MIES AND DE STIJL

By Richard Padovan. London: Spon Press. 2004, [pounds sterling]28

Towards Universality--Le Corbusier, Mies and De Stijl sets out, as its title implies, to offer new insights into the dark heart of 1920s Modernism, but ends up as a near perfect demonstration of the gaping methodological void that an ever expanding literature still does not fill. Richard Padovan brings considerable knowledge and erudition to the task, but his insights, perceptions and discoveries flounder because his methodological basis is simply inadequate to the territory he enters.

Outwardly that is to ground the 'notoriously elusive ... De Stijl phenomenon' in its context, Le Corbusier's encounter with the group in 1923-24, and by characterizing Mies as the most consummate architectural heir to its endeavours. He unfolds his hypotheses in eight thematically linked but discrete essays, concluding with a 12 point manifesto which 'might be placed beside ... van Doesburg's 1924 manifesto, "Towards a Representational Architecture"'. In this, with the aid of such dated slogans as 'long life ... loose fit', he hopes to take architecture beyond 'the striving for the universal' which was 'glory, but ultimately the downfall of 1920s modernism'.

In the teleological assumption that historical analysis can help to shape the future lies the first methodological flaw. If De Stijl is really a 'shy beast' as he characterizes it--rather than a ragbag of assumptions and prejudices whose 'shyness' results from their inherent contradictions, his final ambition helps him to pick aspects of it to pin down. A second problem which shows the gulf between his erudition and his effect lies in his treatment of language. With great precision he analyses De Stijl distortions of the Dutch language, but he misses the glaringly obvious point that words evoke meanings which elude control. Padovan approvingly quotes the Smithsons; ironically though perhaps not coincidentally they assumed their writing had pinpoint accuracy when it had nothing of the sort.

Padovan is at his best when venturing off piste, such as his cogent case for the importance of the mathematical theories of J. L. M. Lauweriks on Le Corbusier and Mies, a discussion that alone makes the book worth reading. But perhaps stemming from the old and flawed assumption that history is only justified as a basis for theory, he largely sticks to a core of canonic texts, buildings and writers, a fixed repertoire for their analysis, such as proportionally-governed 'traces regulateurs' to compare paintings by Mondrian and Corb, and a view that words, forms and ideas have direct correspondence. These flaws make a mutely eloquent case for the urgency of methodological developments for the study of even orthodox modernism.