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On Composition Devices in Modernist Architecture: The Case of De Vore House and House II



Author(s)

Michael Jasper

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DOI:10.17265/1934-7359/2014.08.005

Faculty of Arts and Design, Discipline of Design and Architecture, University of Canberra, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia

This paper examines general composition problems in modernist architecture by means of a close analysis of the formal principles and devices at work in two exemplary mid twentieth century projects, De Vore House by Louis Kahn (1901-1974) and House II by Peter Eisenman (1932). The goal of the paper is to inaugurate a larger research project into the design processes and spatial-formal effect at work in modernist architecture. The methodology is primarily visual, and postulates a range of form relationships for the creation and interpretation of works of architecture. Following an introduction to the research problem, an analysis of the case study projects is undertaken according to three themes: plan disposition, ambiguity in wall and column relations, and volume as impacting on movement. A concluding section summarizes the findings and suggests future lines of research. The paper’s significance lays in its contributions to discussions around architectural practice at a specific moment in modernist architecture’s mid twentieth century trajectory, to our understanding of a number of formal strategies and their resulting architectural effects, and to scholarship on the practice and theories of Kahn and Eisenman.

Composition, column, ground, modernist architecture, plan disposition.