| Why is the nineteenth-century architect Gottfried Semper (1803--1879) known in academic architectural circles mostly for his written work as a theorist and historian of architecture rather than for his designs of monumental neo-Renaissance buildings in Europe's cultural centers? Why, on the other hand, do architectural tourists only know his buildings and not his theories? The answers seem self-evident. As several historians have proclaimed, Semper's theories appear to have little to do with his physical designs. However, I will argue that a small collection of six projects---a table-cabinet, a villa, a laundry ship, a bazaar/department store, a textile store, an observatory---designed by Semper while he lived in Zurich between 1855 and 1871, provide both a potential starting point for an investigation into the resonances between Semper's theoretical texts and built designs, as well as a translation and transformation of these analyses into a contemporary frame of reference.The designs I chose to explore have been underexposed in Semper's work, partially because they were considered inferior to his major works, partially because they did not fit easily into conventional categories of architectural classification, and partially because no one has considered them important enough to warrant any serious investigation.I read the series of projects not as exceptions but rather as paradigmatic examples that point one way out of the narrow confines of the historicist bottle in which Semper has been kept for the past 120 years. Contrary to the limiting label of neo-Renaissance architect, in his theories of architecture Semper explored a wide range of issues such as hybridity, mobility, inversion, displacement, and adaptation in relation to architectural surfaces and structures. In his texts he borrowed widely from other disciplines like linguistics, art history, archaelogy and mathematics, asserting architecture's embedment in a larger political and cultural context, while still insisting on architecture's centrality in his theory and practice. |
