Premaderemade

open and closed systems of construction

In the postwar period, workshop processes like Jean Prouve's were not the only basis for developing a building's identity or uniqueness, despite the premises and practices of repetitive production. We have observed that Prouve's was, in fact, a rather isolated case, even though many architects argued for what he actually practiced. For others who built in the postwar years, "open systems" were not to be rejected, as he had argued, but accepted and developed, as is evident in the work of Neutra and Lods. The same is true for architects working in other countries, where the open process was seen to be more realistic—and this realism had both a pragmatic and an ethical dimension, given the range of pressures on postwar housing needs. These architects utilized elements with different origins (factory and craft origins), while they attempted to achieve the rationality and coherence of organization that characterized Prouve's work. Modern manufacturing standards were accepted, but modified.

Already in the 1950s the younger generation of CIAM supporters who formed Team 10 introduced a range of materials in their buildings in reaction to what they saw as the "contemporary" version of modernism, a version that demonstrated the misuse of traditional motifs and materials. This reaction came to be called "New Brutalism." But new ways of using materials was not all that characterized brutalist buildings; also important was the reevaluation of the advanced buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, the lessons of which, according to Reyner Banham, had been forgotten. Similarly significant was the use of proportions in design, then popularly described by Rudolf Wittkower.1 The preoccupation with a range of materials and their various uses was further strengthened by renewed contact with Japanese precedents—not as examples of the craft tradition, much appreciated by Frank Lloyd Wright, nor as an indication of the essential role of structure and screen, as they were for Mies, but as objects of what Banham called an "intellectual appraisal."

The work of Alison and Peter Smithson at Hunstanton exhibits little of the idealization of construction that typified Prouve's buildings or those of Mies van der Rohe, whose work in both Germany and the United States was nevertheless very important to them. Rather than correcting the external appearance of the building's structure, as Mies had done at his Lake Shore Drive apartments, the Smithsons wanted their building to present the "facts" of construction more directly, unadorned; not "as if" they were something they weren't, but as they were themselves. Thus their work exemplifies the "realism" we have mentioned. A comparison of two details—the corner column at Mies's Memorial Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the corner column at the Smithsons' Hunstanton School—indicates the differences between the two approaches. In the IIT building the columns are recessed from the planes of the exterior walls, creating a spatial void that gives the effect of an absent or missing column. Further, the construction of the column is composite, partly column and partly wall: standard sections are welded together for the combined purpose of supporting and articulating the corner. On the inside of the building, this results in the separation of the column from the walls. Once separated, their relationship needed to be reconsidered or negotiated in each case, depending on the various circumstances within the building. At Hunstanton, by contrast, the corner column is coplanar with the exterior walls. Because the steel sections that separate the building's lower and upper floor are coplanar with the column, however, the column's supporting role is deemphasized, making it akin to the border of a picture frame. This also means the distinction between column and cladding is reduced; as the columns join the horizontal elements in the construction of an atectonic frame or border, they take on the appearance of surface. Yet, despite its atectonic planarity, this border's color distinguishes it from the walling. Brick panels contrast with it, as do glazed surfaces. With the introduction of these two materials came others, all appearing as "facts" of construction. The use of such a range of material facts, understood to be expressive in their own right, distinguishes this building from those of Mies and Prouve. It also illustrates why the work of the Smithsons shows a different approach to the idea of the "system"—

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