Hendrik Petrus Berlage : Thoughts on Style, 1886—1909. — Santa Monica, 1996

  

 

 

 

 

 

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Iain Boyd Whyte received his doctorate from Cambridge University with a dissertation on “Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism.” His research interests comprise twentieth-century architectural history, particularly in Germany, Austria, and Holland; Anglo-German literary relations from 1700 to the present; twentieth-century German art; and architectural theory, film theory, and aesthetics. His publications include The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies hy Bruno Taut and His Circle (1985) and Emil Hoppe, Marcel Kammcrer, Otto Schonthal: Three Architects from the Master Class of Otto Wagner (English and German editions, 1989). Among the many texts he has translated is Tilmann Buddensieg’s Industriehultur: Peter Behrens and the AEG (1985). Whyte is currently the director of the Centre for Architectural History and Theory at the University of Edinburgh.

 

Wim de Wit was educated in Holland, completing a degree in the history of modern architecture at the Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen. His publications focus on Dutch architecture, particularly the Amsterdam school, and the architecture of Chicago. De Wit has also curated a number of exhibitions, including Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament (1986) and Grand Illusions: Chicago's World’s Fair of 1893 (1993). He has held curatorial posts in Holland; at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York; and at the Chicago Historical Society. At present he is Head of Special Collections at the Getty Center.

 

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H. P. Berlage’s critical writings are of central importance to the theoretical discussions that accompanied the birth of architectural Modernism. His despair at what he saw as the weakness of late nineteenth-century architecture and the evangelical zeal with which he proclaimed the gospel of a new, rational architecture appropriate to the twentieth century give his writings great power. Yet, the conviction and the sheer volume of Berlages written output led to repetition and muddle, with the result that his writings often lack the lucidity and clarity that mark his buildings. Berlage was a committed internationalist, and the same text was often published in several languages, with marked differences in both writing style and content.

 

The two essays that were originally published in German—Thoughts on Style in Architecture and The Foundations and Development of Architecture—were translated by Iain Boyd Whyte. The rest, first published in Dutch, were translated by Wim de Wit and reviewed by Anne-Mieke Halbrook.

 

Three of the essays, “On the Likely Development of Architecture” (1905), “Some Reflections on Classical Architecture” (1908), and “Art and Society” (1909), were first published as journal articles. Berlage subsequently included the first and the last in his collection of essays Studies over bouwkunst, stijl en samenleving (1910) and “Some Reflections” in the collection Beschouwingen over bouwkunst en hare ontwikkeling (1911). The journal and book versions of these essays are in all substantive respects identical, with differences largely confined to typographical errors and the rephrasing of the occasional sentence without altering the meaning. As the texts published in book form appeared later, they can be considered more definitive, and for this reason the translations in this volume have been made from those versions. The illustrations accompanying the texts in this volume are also taken from the book versions of Berlage's texts.

 

Not all of the quotations included by Berlage can be traced back to their original sources. Of those that have been identified, some were found to deviate from the originals in a number of ways that have been indicated in the editors notes.

 

 

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Fig. 1. S. H. de Roos, portrait of H. P. Berlage, 1916, ink on paper, 18 × 14 cm. Private collection. Photo: Courtesy of Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, Rotterdam.

 

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Acknowledgments.. ix

Translators’ Note.. xi

Introduction.. 1

Architecture’s Place in Modern Aesthetics (1886).. 95

Architecture and Impressionism (1894).. 105

Thoughts on Style in Architecture (1905).. 122

On the Likely Development of Architecture (1905).. 157

The Foundations and Development of Architecture (1908).. 185

Some Reflections on Classical Architecture (1908).. 259

Art and Society (1909).. 277

Bibliographies.. 323

Index.. 328

 

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