Below is a photo of a tiny little house at No 11 Wybalena Road which is taken from The Trust’s book The heritage of Hunters Hill. It shows the house as it was in 1969, not long after it was completed.  It’s a heritage listed house, but it was built from materials removed to make way for the Burns Bay Rd expressway and the roof tiles came from the Figtree Chapel that was relocated in Martin St with, unfortunately, very ordinary cement tiles. 

This photo was taken in December 2005 and shows the most recent alterations and additions to the house.  These latest works involved the demolition of a previous addition to the cottage designed by a well-known Pritzker Prize-winning architect dating from the early 1980s.  He had successfully challenged Council in the Land and Environment Court after it had raised objections to the proposal to build a two-storey glass conservatory on the end of the existing gable.

The latest additions are designed by another well-known firm of architects and are a good example of a pervasive architectural philosophy, which states that all new buildings should be “contemporary” and of their time.

Here the word “contemporary” really means “modernist”, and in keeping with modernist aesthetics, the new work exhibits a deliberate lack of concern for context and history.  It also shows a tendency towards anal retentiveness, which arises from the modernist’s celebration of the clean, the neat, the tidy, and the straight.  The original curved stone garden wall has been demolished because it did not conform.

Modernism is the orthodoxy that has been taught to all architects since the end of the Second World War.  It is more than just a style, it is actually the established religion of architects.  Most architects are mere Christmas and Easter Modernists. The most dangerous ones, however, are the modernist fundamentalists.  They consider it blasphemous to refer to modernism as a mere style.   They have declared a virtual jihad on those who do not support their views – particularly Councils.  Their preferred weapon of mass destruction, of course, is the Land and Environment Court.

Unfortunately for architects, most of the rest of the population do not share their religion. Many even profess a strong hatred of modernism and its followers. There are no modernist houses at the HOMEWORLD DISPLAY HOME VILLAGE. 

This split between architects and the community seems a peculiarly modern phenomenon.   Christopher Wren did not have to take London Council to the Land and Environment Court to get a DA for St Paul’s Cathedral.  So how did this split come about?  And how did modernism become the established architectural church?

While Modernism may be considered by some to be contemporary, it is in fact a style that has been around since the middle of the 19th century

The Bauhaus was the most influential design school of the 20th century and its philosophy was entirely Modernist.  Bauhaus modernism was also a Utopian political movement, which was left wing, collectivist and anti-bourgeois.  Tom Wolfe, in his book From Bauhaus To Our House, writes that that the underlying theory of the Bauhaus was functionalism, which he claims is a euphemism for  'non-bourgeois'.  According to Wolfe, flat roofs and plain facades were preferred and ornamentation, 'pitched roofs and cornices were never used because these represented the “crowns” of the old nobility, which the bourgeoisie spent most of its time imitating’.

Walter Gropius wanted to unite art and craft and to eliminate the traditional distinction between artist and craftsman. This was Gesamtkunstwerk or Total Artwork, a concept invented by Richard Wagner in 1849.   Adolf Hitler also liked this idea and applied it, with Wagner’s music, to boost the impact of Nazi military power and pomp.

When Hitler took over Germany in 1933 Mies Van der Rohe was head of the Bauhaus. The Nazis considered The Bauhaus “Jewish” and “Oriental” and branded its work “decadent”, so they wasted no time in closing it down.  Their plans to replace the flat roof on Gropius’ building with an “Aryan” pitched roof were put on the back burner while they set about imposing their politics on the world. 

Like any persecuted religious group, the only way for the Bauhaus modernists to survive was to go underground or flee.  Many of the Bauhaus leading lights ended up in America.  Walter Gropius, became head of school at Harvard University and was joined there by Marcel Breuer.  Mies Van der Rohe went to the Illinois Institute of Technology and was also given the job to design its new campus.

Within 4 years of its closure in Germany, the Bauhaus had relocated, bigger and better in the United States.  Gropius, Mies and Breuer became household names.  The rich and famous became their patrons and the radical, socialist and collectivist ideas that underpinned the philosophy of the German Bauhaus just faded away.

Architectural students from all over the world came to study under them.  Bauhaus modernism became virtually the only architectural philosophy taught in America during a time of great post-war prosperity and building.   As a result, the old Beaux Arts traditions became a heresy, and the legacy of America’s most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, faded.

As noted by Klaus Herdeq in his book The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy, Walter Gropius had an “ideological opposition to the cultivation of historical consciousness”.   As a result, the Bauhaus architectural schools did not teach History. They also tended to ignore the physical and historical context within which buildings exist.  This, of course, is the basis of Modernism’s rampant iconoclasm, characterised by Tom Wolfe as “starting from zero”.  Old buildings and neighbourhoods were soon under threat from an architectural culture that placed little importance on heritage and neighbourhood.

Like Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe, as well as teaching, also ran a large and successful architectural practice.  In 1951 he designed the most famous and influential modernist house of the 20th century for Dr Edith Farnsworth, a physician and member of Northwestern University’s medical faculty, who was Mies’ client as well as, for a short time, his lover.

The Farnsworth house was built on the banks of the Fox River, 50 miles west of Chicago. With its external walls are made entirely of glass, the house is a version on Mies’ quintessential glass box, the German pavilion he designed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. 

A comparison of the two houses highlights a number of aspects of Bauhaus modernism and how that differs from Wright’s organic approach to architecture. Falling Water is solid, with a strong connection to the earth. 

•It is complex and multi-layered.

•It is a unique response to a complicated sloping site.

•It respects the unique character of its setting through the use of local materials.

The Farnsworth House, on the other hand, is light and floats above the ground – somewhat disconnected from it.

•Its form is simple – a single rectangular box.

•Its function is simple - a weekender for a single woman.

•It makes extensive use of manufactured products, steel, glass and plywood.

•It sits on a flat site, which poses no building problems.

•Rather than being a unique response to its site, it is a generic box that can be plonked down anywhere, provided the site is flat. 

•The Farnsworth House is essentially a European response to an American landscape, designed by a foreign architect who had only been in America for a few years.

The Farnsworth House never proved to be the idyllic retreat that Edith Farnsworth wanted. According to its builder Karl Freund, in an interview published in Fine Homebuilding magazine in 1988, “In the first winter, the glass was opaque with ice – no matter that the heat was on.  It melted when you turned the heat up a little bit or when the sun came out”.  This required the placement of towels all along the bases of the walls to absorb the condensation.  As well, an oily residue from the heater, which was in constant use, covered all the interior surfaces. The unremitting sun quickly faded the shantung drapes. 

As predicted by Freund, (who advised Mies against his chosen location for the house) the house was flooded in 1956 and rugs and furniture were ruined.  Not only didn’t the house work, but the relationship between the architect and his client collapsed.  The thing ended up in court where Dr Farnsworth unsuccessfully sued Mies for cost overruns.

The perverse reality of the 20th century’s most influential house is that it simply doesn’t work. Despite this, the Farnsworth House has been copied or adapted time and time again by architects all over the world.  Its simplicity has made it very easily imitated and its generic non site-specific nature has made it eminently transportable. 

Ideally you should also have a large site with plenty of dense planting to maintain privacy.  But many versions of the house lack this essential ingredient and suffer problems.  If you saw the ABC’s program, In the Mind of the Architect, you will remember that Melbourne architect Sean Goodsell’s wife had to get undressed in a cupboard to avoid being seen by the neighbours when she hopped into bed.

So how does all this relate to Australia and what is the Australian connection to the Bauhaus? In the years leading up to 1951, when the Farnsworth House was built, Australia was considered a cultural backwater.  There was little appreciation of the natural Australian environment or the tradition of Australian colonial architecture.  The vernacular Australian house was considered ugly and damned by architectural writers like Robin Boyd.  At the same time as Australia’s  artists, architects, writers and intellectuals considered it essential to leave Australia to pursue their careers overseas, the rest of the bourgeoisie joined the “progress associations” that had branches in almost every suburb and the Government embarked on massive infrastructure projects like the Snowy Mountains Scheme and Warragamba dam.

Australia in 1948 was the perfect place for a young Bauhaus trained architect to “start from zero”.  Enter, Harry Seidler, aged 26 and a half. Harry was enticed to Australia by his mother, Rose, with the carrot of a new house to design. He had studied under the Bauhaus legends Walter Gropius and Joseph Albers and had been for 2 years Chief Assistant in the New York office of Marcel Breuer.  He was the real thing – a refugee from war-torn Europe and an architect with the highest modernist credentials possible.  He was also a committed evangelist of the Modernist religion, saying, “I wouldn’t allow my poor mother to have anything in the house not consistent with the religion: Modernism”.

Harry’s architectural philosophy is summed up on his website. He believes in Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, which he interprets as the total control over everything in a building, right down to the choice of the table napkins.  He also espouses a “design aim and approach to architecture (that) is clear and direct, building upon and extending the tenets of modern architecture. Short-lived fashions and regressive "heritage" stylisms are shunned.“ 

To get a sense of what Harry means by “heritage stylisms” I visited Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta.   And to try to understand his “tenets of modern architecture”, I went to the Rose Seidler House in Wahroonga.  These two houses make an interesting comparison – a bit like that between the Farnsworth House and Falling Water.

•It is a cool beautiful, relaxed house.

•Its wide verandahs create a seamless link between inside and outside.

•Its geometry is complex, with a number of separate masses that are linked by covered walkways.

•With their high ceilings and finely detailed joinery, the design of the main living rooms is subtle and beautifully proportioned.

•The house’s large sloping roof settles the structure down into the earth.

•And shaded by large trees and softened by the vines, the house melds into its setting.

Only parts of Elizabeth Farm are attributed to an architect (the main living rooms are by John Verge).  The house has evolved over many years and has been altered and added to many times by many different people. By contrast, The Rose Seidler House is the work of single architect in every aspect, including the choice of its art works, furniture, rugs and table settings.

The Rose Seidler house is distinguished by

•Its geometry, which is simple, stark and rectangular.

•Its separation from the earth. The main living areas, are 3 metres above a car space at ground level.

•Its lack of eaves with large and mostly unshaded window areas.

•The privileged position it gives to the motor car, which takes up the best spot in the house – the ground floor north-eastern corner.  At Elizabeth Farm, John Macarthur always kept his vehicles in their rightful place - in the stables down the back.

The design of the Rose Seidler House pays no heed to the vernacular building forms that had been developed in response to the local climate. And, like the Farnsworth House, its environmental performance is not great, to say the least. The house stands as an object in the landscape. It is more like a piece of sculpture, to be looked at and admired.  It is not the sort of place where you can open a tinnie, throw off your shoes, sit back on the lounge and watch the footy on TV.  Back in the 50s it was considered quite alien and was known as the “house of glass” or “the house on sticks”.

Unlike Elizabeth Farm, whose appeal is direct and visceral, the Rose Seidler House appeals to the intellect rather than the emotions.  It appeals especially to the intellect that has been honed on the hard strop of modernism. 

The house won the Sulman Prize for architecture in 1952.  This cemented the place of Modernism in Australia and set the benchmark for design excellence (as judged by architects, of course).  It established Harry’s reputation and was the first step in an extremely successful architectural career.  It also marked the installation of Harry as the Archbishop of the Church of Modernism in Australia. 

Over his long career, in keeping with the “feeling that (he and his fellow Harvard graduates) were destined to play (their) part in transforming the visual man-made world”, Harry has had any number of big ideas.  Some ideas came to fruition, like the Diamond Bay apartment building.   This was featured recently in the Herald as an example of what not to build on a Pacific Ocean cliff top. 

Throughout the world many similar grandiose schemes for high rise housing created, instead of worker utopias, vast vertical slums, which became centres of violence and social unrest. The most spectacular failure was the Pruitt-Igoe housing scheme in St Louis, which was blown up in 1972 as the only way to resolve the problems arising from their design. The architect for Pruitt-Igoe was Minoru Yamasaki.  By a strange twist of fate, Minoru was also the architect of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, which suffered a similar fate. 

The universal acceptance of Bauhaus Modernism by the architectural profession has left any number of unfortunate legacies.   In Sydney, these include

•The destruction of much of our 19th century sandstone architectural heritage.

•The proliferation of ugly multi-storey buildings, particularly around the Harbour.

•The construction of buildings that have ignored environmental principles learned over 150 years of European settlement.

It has also been responsible for the creation of an architectural profession that is often seen as arrogant, insensitive to context and heritage and disdainful of the views of the community. This in turn has been a factor in the disconnection between architects and the rest of the community.
As a result, draftsmen and builders design more buildings than architects do, mostly in the McMansion vein.  These are poorly designed and dreadful to live in.  A quick trip to Pulpit Point in Hunters Hill will remind you of the impact on the neighbourhood when two or more McMansions get together. 

There is an urgent need for architects re-establish their position of pre-eminence as the designers of the built environment and for them to reconnect with the community, if only to get a better McMansion.  The good news is that there are signs that this is actually happening.   Architects’ training is now more focussed on the relationship of architects to the broader community.  And there is a strong emphasis on designing buildings that are environmentally responsible and contextually appropriate. However, with their plans to accommodate umpteen thousand extra people a minute in Sydney’s existing suburbs in medium density housing, State Government planners now pose the major threat to our neighbourhoods.  Therefore, to quote John Howard, we must remain completely alert and continually alarmed.