Ornament, Nature & Abstraction: Louis H. SullivanIn his essay, The Tall Building Artistically Considered, Louis Sullivan coined the phrase: “Form ever follows function.”1 This may seem odd for an architect who ornamented his buildings with floral patterns (see figure 1). Sullivan strongly tied ornament with form and function, seeing no reason to divorce them as later architects of the International style would do under the mantra of “form follows function”. For Sullivan, function is not simply mun-dane purpose; form and function are embedded within an immaterial spiritual force in the Trancendentalist tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Horatio Greenough. In Ornament and Architecture, when Sullivan asked architects to eschew ornament, he did not do so in the Loos-ian sense of creating an architecture devoid of ornament. His intention was, much like Laugier’s primitive hut, to insist on a critical reappraisal of the use of revived styles as ornament in architecture. For Sullivan, the role of the architect was to animate materials “naturally, logically and poetically,”2 the functional expression of form be-ing found in nature and logic; poetry being the act of instilling architecture with greater philo-sophical values; namely the spirit of American democracy (see figures 2 and 3). Democracy for Sullivan is not an abstract political ideal, but a “collective psychological liberation that comes when humans think naturally and recognise the limitlessness of their mental powers.”3

Thus, as architecture is the “index of the flow of the thought of the people [...] the attempt at imitation [...] of the by-gone forms of building is a procedure unworthy of a free people.”4 Sullivan broke from the falsehood of architecture as a self-referential system of closed forms; into a system of “organic reasoning,”5 where Nature, in the Emersonian sense of the word, is the medium through which ornament is expressed, creating a uniquely Ameri-can style and philosophy of ornament in architecture. Sullivan saw ornament as more than a surface treatment to a building. As noted above, Sullivan’s sense of ornament was deeply embedded in the form of the building. Unlike Karl Botticher’s understanding of the Kern- and Kunstform as separated entities, Sullivan would embed his ornament within the material of the structure. While Gottfried Semper and Owen Jones suggested that one decorate construction, rather than construct decoration6, Sul-livan followed his own ornamental principles, which he drew from Nature. This embedded system of ornamentation was continued by Frank Lloyd Wright in his textile block phase, though not without somewhat disembedding the ornament of the textile block from the struc-ture of the reinforcing frame (see figure 4). While Sullivan’s ornamentation is no doubt drawn from nature, with his use of floral motifs, he also draws heavily from geometric Islamic influences (see figure 5); the Ori-ent of his time, just as Japan was the Orient of Wright’s time. Rather than drawing from the American physical landscape, Sullivan draws inspiration from the psychic landscape of the American people. Sullivan’s philosophy of Nature and his messianic vision for the American people and their architecture draws heavily on Transcendentalist modes of thought, his build-ings championing a democratic individuality in the commercial industrial age. While the British Arts and Crafts movement was an openly Socialist movement, Sullivan, his spiritual successor Frank Lloyd Wright, and other architects of the Chicago and Prairie schools, were philosophical champions of liberty and individualism. Hence, while the British movement required a return to trade guilds, Sullivan and his American followers were perfectly at home in using industry, commercialism and engineering of the day to create a contemporary architecture (see figure 6), sensitive to the psychic and physical needs of the American people in their new, individualist society.

1. Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York: George Wit-tenborn, 1947), 208

2. Louis Sullivan, “Kindergarten Chats,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York: George Wittenborn, 1947), 99.

3. Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Historicism in the United States,” in Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 167.

4. Louis Sullivan, “What is Architecture?” in Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 177-179.

5. Sullivan, “What is Architecture?” 188.

6. Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (New York: Portland House, (1856) 1987), 5.

Figure 1. Wainwright Building, cornice detail. The Wainwright shows Sullivan’s use of naturalistic ornament on a functional office building. Sullivan broke with the trend of ornamenting office buildings in the Roman style, as can be seen on buildings such as the Philadelphia Public Ledger Building. (Source: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/mo0297.photos.099170p/resource/ )

Figure 2. Auditorium Building, front elevation. The elevation of the Auditorium shows Sullivan’s restained Richardsonian Romanesque style; a style he used before developing his system of ornamenta-tion to maturity, which can subsequently be seen in the building’s interior. This disconnection shows Sul-livan’s uptake of what he saw as an appropriate style of architecture for the American democracy. (Source: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/il0091.sheet.00003a/resource/ )

Figure 3. Auditorium Building, detail of Ganz Hall capital. The ornament of the capital shows Sullivan’s natrualistic, organic approach to ornamentation, embedded in a rational system of construction. The interior of the building shows his unique, individual approach to architectural ornamentation, as Sullivan developed his philosohpy of architecture in the built form and in his writings. (Source: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/il0091.photos.061071p/resource/ )

Michael McLoughlin 583230 ABPL30053 Bronwyn Stocks Wednesday 5:15pm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3 - 42. New York: Random House, 2000.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 132 - 153. New York: Random House, 2000.

Frampton, Kenneth. “Adler & Sullivan: the Auditorium and the high rise 1886-95,” in Mod-ern Architecture: A Critical History, 51 - 56. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Frampton, Kenneth. “Frank Lloyd Wright and the myth of the Prairie 1890-1916,” in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 57 - 63. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Frampton, Kenneth. “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Text-Tile Tectonic,” in Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, 93 - 120. Chicago: MIT Press, 1995.

Frampton, Kenneth. “News from Nowhere: England 1836-1924,” in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 42 - 50. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Jones, Owen. The Grammar of Ornament. New York: Portland House, (1856) 1987.

Mallgrave, Harry Francis. “The Arts and Crafts Movement,” in Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673-1938, 170 - 194. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Mallgrave, Harry Francis. “Historicism in the United States,” in Modern Architectural Theo-ry: A Historical Survey, 1673-1938, 140-169. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Semper, Gottfried. The Four Elements of Architecture and other Writings, Harry Francis Mallgrave & Wolfgang Herrmann, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Sullivan, Louis. “Kindergarten Chats,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, 17 - 177. New York: George Wittenborn, 1947.

Sullivan, Louis. “Ornament in Architecture,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, 187 - 190. New York: George Wittenborn, 1947.

Sullivan, Louis. A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Power. New York: Press of the American Institute of Architects, 1924.

Sullivan, Louis. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, 203 - 213. New York: George Wittenborn, 1947.

Sullivan, Louis. “What is Architecture?: A Study in the American People of Today” in Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers, 174 - 195.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Figure 4. Frank Lloyd Wright’s patent double wall, lightweight block system. Though removing the ornamental element from the structure, Wright nonetheless continued Sullivan’s mode of carving, or rather casting, ornament into masonry. (Source: Ken-neth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture)

Figure 5. Sullivan’s plates on inorganic and organic ornamentation. (Source: Louis Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament)

Figure 6. Wainwright Building. Sullivan was prefectly at home creating functional contemporary com-mercial structures that took advantage of modern construction techniques, while still using a deeply spiritual and philosophical system of ornamentation. (Source: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.mo0297.photos.099207p/ )