Critical Analysis of the Farnsworth House according to the Minimalist Style.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FARNSWORT HOUSE. 

INTRODUCTION.

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophical study that relates to nature, the expression of beauty and taste; in other words, the appearances of things. It is derived from the Greek word 'aisthetikos', which refers to sensory perception and sensual understanding or knowledge. As aesthetics refers to the appreciation of beauty, it is influenced by an individual's subjective taste.

Like painting and sculpture, architecture can be considered a visual work of art to which the philosophy of aesthetics can be applied. However, this application of aesthetics to buildings and architecture is complicated by the physical requirements of budget, structure, regulations, climate etc., which means that building design is dependent on form, function and aesthetics.

Beauty, aesthetics, harmony, equality, similarity, geometry, numbers, rhythm, proportion, symmetry, balance, movement, color, space, function, expression n and leguage. All these words have something in common; they are part of a work of art; that is to say, of Architecture. These are some of the characteristics that an architect must take into account to design a project and that these come to have a good aesthetic result. We know that aesthetics is the study of beauty. But in reality beauty is the interpretation of something that is in harmony and balance with nature and that can lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being.

Aesthetics is one of the main principles of Architecture that both students and professionals should love. It is about beauty or appreciation of beauty. In other words, it is a philosophy behind a pleasing appearance.

TYPES OF CRITIQUES

Critiques are sets of opinions and judgments that provide responses to analyses that can be positive or negative. When reference is made to the verb criticize, it is usually understood as something negative, although it indicates how to judge or discern. It is to make judgments, whether favorable or unfavorable.

Criticism in architecture, as an activity, has the role of a line of flight in movements that are continuous both in association and dissociation in the collective and also in the personal. For architectural criticism to exist, there must be an architectural fact constituted as the object of the criticism or study to be carried out. There is social, theatrical, political, journalistic, arts, architectural, dance, cinematographic, constructive, negative, etc. criticism. 

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

It is produced with the intention of helping someone and to provoke a positive change, with which much respect is shown to the person being criticized.

NEGATIVE CRITICISM

These criticisms are necessary when it is required to improve a behavior and give guidance so that it is effective. At the time of making a negative criticism should be reviewed the mistakes that most often commits that person.

CRITICAL THEORY

It is the one that emphasizes the theories that criticize capitalism and its domination. This term arises from the Frankfurt School, and in particular, from the work of the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas.

CRITICAL POLITICS

This kind of theory of politics that is critical need not necessarily be full of very elegant approaches or simplicity in theory, it must be committed to the liberation of those who are the objects of exploitation, exclusion and inhumanity.

CRITICISM IN ARCHITECTURE

Criticism in architecture has to start from the obvious, from every fact that is built and that is the product of a system of conditioning factors that are real and in which ideological, economic and cultural factors are mixed.

THE FARNSWORT HOUSE.

DESCRIPTION.

The Farnsworth House, an icon of the architecture of the Modern Movement, is located in a natural setting, very close to a river, with one side facing a forest, which separates it from the flowing water, and the other side facing a small meadow.

The building is organized around two rectangular platforms. The first of these, accessed by four linear steps, has no walls or roof and acts as a terrace, separated from the ground by four steel pillars. From it, another five steps identical to the previous ones provide access to the second platform, located 1.5 meters above the ground and supporting the house itself by means of eight steel pillars.

The raised plane above the ground is used both outside and inside to prevent water from flooding the house in times of overflowing of the river.

This house, which does not seem to be one, possibly because of its desire for transparency, is nevertheless an architectural discourse, a meditation on "less is more" or on "almost nothing", to use Mies' words. A linguistic and spatial reductionism that is composed like a Palladian villa, although it does not rise on a platform, but on the void, although it does not use columns but white beams that function as a screen that seems to envelop the place of transparency, that is, the space of the house, the space of the void. A void that his collaborator and admirer Philip Johnson would fill with intimacy, trying to emulate the master, in his own house, the Glass House in New Canaan (1949).

HISTORY.

The house consists of a metal structure enclosed only with glass that responds to the concept of a lookout, thus paying homage to the beauty of the space surrounding the house. The transparency allows full awareness of the landscape from the inside, but also acts in reverse, incorporating the interior space of the house to the enclave in a radical way. Mies acts with full awareness of this responsibility and carefully studies each element in terms of its impact on the new site that is thus arranged. The architect consciously chooses the conditions of the place he assumes and the way to face them.

RESOLUTION OF THE INTERIOR SPACE.

The rest of the interior volume of the house is not compartmentalized, although a living room area, where we find a fireplace, a dining room and two "bedrooms" can be differentiated.

Mies has determined the proportions and shape of the box with little or no resizing of the program's needs. This is demonstrated by the fact that even the most imprecise sketch of the service core clearly incorporates the perimeter of the floor plan and the location of the pillars. In other words, once the structure has been resolved, the interior elements that must satisfy the program are studied.

This is a notable change in the way of proceeding with respect to the European projects, where the structure appeared in the form of a grid punctuating the plan, once the order of the spatial sequence had been established.

The sketches show that in no case do the interior divisions question the envelope decided beforehand, the proportions of the floor plan, the position of the pillars, the area of the porch and the mullions of the carpentry of the enclosure are conditions that remain unchanged. The architect proposes that the interior distribution has to take all the functional requirements, facilities, bathroom and kitchen without interrupting the glazed perimeter.

STRUCTURE.

The volume of the Farnsworth house is placed on the ground parallel to the riverbed, but when the water overflows it floods the banks and erases any reference to the banks. Mies proposes a structure on pillars that provides less surface area in contact with the ground and does not hinder the flow of water. In this way the horizontal planes remain radically separated from the original terrain.

STATIC STRUCTURE

In terms of static structure, the Farnsworth house is the ultimate expression of minimalism, using only the minimum elements necessary to ensure the stability of the house. These minimum elements are formed by 8 columns separated by a distance of 6.60 meters that support the two slabs that form the floor and the roof.

PILLARS

The columns located tangentially to the outer edge of the slabs do not interrupt the horizontal planes, floor and roof are shaped in the same way. The columns are formed by a continuous profile, in one piece, from the floor to the top of the roof. The vertical line prevails over the projection of the slab and maintains an analogous relationship with the two planes, the lower floor plane and the upper roof plane, which helps to reinforce the equivalence between the two.

SLABS

This structure, formed by a carefully crafted steel skeleton of beams and columns, supports the precast concrete slabs used in the floor and roof.

The slabs overhang the column structure by 2.75 meters, creating column-free corners that help emphasize the immateriality of the house.

FACADE

The façade is made of individual floor-to-ceiling glass panels, held to the structural system by steel mullions.

The open-plan interior with a height of 2.85 meters is only fragmented by the service block containing the kitchen and washroom.

MATERIALS.

 Architectural work made of steel, laminated glass and Roman travertine slabs for the floor and roof.

PILLARS

All the steel pillars that support both platforms are of square section and have been sandblasted and polished once in place. They have subsequently been painted white, making their welds practically invisible. The connections are made of structural steel welded in such a way as to minimize their visual presence.

FLOOR

The floor of the house is laid out in two layers that house a radiant floor heating system, as well as all the domestic plumbing drains, which drain into a single central circular chamber, which also receives the rainwater from the roof, which is flat, although it is slightly inclined towards the center to allow the water to drain.

The travertine marble floor was laid in such a way that the slabs are neither interrupted nor perforated, thus creating a smooth transition between inside and outside.

This detail, combined with the flat, continuous roof and the completely straight facades make the house look like a box that "slipped" between the columned structure.

FACADE

The panels that form the facade of the house are single glazing with a thickness of 0.64 cm supported by steel mullions constructed with W-shaped angles and bars. A continuous carriage curtain provides privacy and shade to the interior of the house. The only operable parts of the façade are the double door and two windows located at the bottom of the eastern façade.

The effect of this completely transparent façade is to blur the usual boundaries that define domesticity. In the Farnsworth House, the distinctions between public and private, exterior and interior, often disappear.

CRITICS.

THE USEFUL.

According to Villagrán

The useful value refers to the architectural object satisfying the requirements for which it has been built, and José Villagrán García will differentiate two types of usefulness, one is comfort and the other firmness, the first of them is related to the fulfillment that the building is habitable, therefore it should be well ventilated, illuminated and satisfy thermal comfort requirements, the second, firmness, is referred to the building satisfying the constructive mechanical requirements. (Villagran, 2021)

If the building does not satisfy these requirements of comfort and firmness it can be judged that it is not architectural, because it is not useful, something different is the case of a commemorative monument, in this what governs, the ultimate goal, is that it is constituted as an object that refers to a past, the useful value in it is secondary.

Based on the values of the architect Villagrán, we can say that the Farnsworth house does not comply one hundred percent with its critical sense since it does not fulfill the function for which it was created, since it had problems throughout its use that made it impossible to inhabit it and therefore it has not fulfilled its objective.

THE LOGICAL.

The logical value refers to thoughts, which can be qualified as true or false. For Villagrán García, truth is a relation of conformity of the thought with the object, therefore, this affirmation supposes three elements, the object, the thought and the relation of conformity of both. Villagrán García argues that there are three types of truth according to the type of relationship mentioned above: logical truth, metaphysical truth and moral truth.

Logical truth is the first definition of truth, that is, the conformity of thought with the object. If I affirm, there is a full moon, and when observing the sky we see a full moon, then our affirmation is true.

Metaphysical truth refers to the conformity of an entity with the essence of its nature. To clarify this point, our author assumes that, in a work, which has been previously planned, if such planning is not in conformity with the constructed work, then it cannot be qualified as true ontically. Perhaps an example in this case is what happens in the projection in architecture, that in the views and sketches there is a projection of what you want to do, but, finally, when the construction is finished, the resulting work is very different from the projected one For Villagrán García, in architectural creation there is no other truth that is not ontic. When considering the work in accordance with the essence (projection) that the creator of it has been able to imagine. (Villagran, 2021)

In the useful criterion of the work we can say that it does not comply with all the points covered by this concept, in the first one we can say that its materials do coincide with the visual since at first sight we can see the transparency of the glass, but in the matter of the steel, due to its finish at first sight we cannot determine it, we would have to approach and touch it to know that it is steel.

The shape meets the needs of a house, perhaps not conventional, but it is habitable and does not go beyond what is fundamentally necessary. Its exterior form, clearly coincides with its interior form, in that point the morphology is very successful,

It could be said that it coincides with the historical time since in those years the modern movement and minimalism were a worldwide trend, even the author himself was the main referent of the international style.

AESTHETIC.

The aesthetic value refers to the quality of beauty that a work of art has. For our author the beauty of the work of art will be in the composition, in the perfect harmony of the parts, according to the means and situations of that work. The situation refers to the theme and the pretext taken by the artist for his creative work. In art, the means are the instruments used by the artist to give form to the material and result in his creation (according to Villagrán García, it is through these means that the new is achieved in art).

In architecture the means is the built space, and in it Villagrán García distinguishes two types:

1. The habitable or delimited spaces, and 2. The built or delimiting spaces (it is like the metaphor of the continent space and the contained space).

The habitable or delimited spaces refer to the distributive or circulatory spaces, the living spaces and the auxiliary or complementary spaces.

While the built or delimiting spaces refer to the vertical supports and the roofs that go over these supports. All these spaces have plastic qualities, studied from their metric or measures, their chromaticity, the haptic qualities or the texture of the material with which they have been made and the figure of the space.

All these qualities are means and have as their end the harmony of architecture, which can only be experienced when it is walked through and lived. And also, for Villagrán García, all these means will be part of the architectural party, which consists of the combination of the qualities mentioned and that are in consonant unity.

On this point we can assure that it is fulfilled one hundred percent because the work at first glance and wherever you look is beautiful, its spaces are very well delimited but not so visible because inside it is open, but in turn you can see the difference of spaces.

Its finishes are fine and complement each other inside, while on the outside we can see how its volume is wrapped in the landscape creating a contrast of colors and unique shapes. The everything in the nothingness.

THE SOCIAL.

Moreover, to make this writing only an introduction to Villagrán García's intention of structuring a theory of architecture, I want to bring up the last value studied by this author and that is the social value. Perhaps the term is unclear, but only refers to any object that is or will be part of the culture, extended this term as a body of knowledge that has a society to survive.

As architecture is part of the culture of society, it adopts a formative function of the spirit of the classes with less "cultural heritage", so that Villagrán García argues that one of the tasks of the architect is to form spirits through his work, for our author, the architectural form has an instrumental value because it is loaded with information of our time and will serve as study material for the future archaeologist or historian of our society, here, without saying it, Villagrán García gives a glimpse of architecture as a symbol, anticipating the studies of postmodern critics and historians.

At this point this work does not fit, since it speaks of a social sense and in an isolated house you could not include that term, much less link it to a common society. Rather we can see it from an intrinsic point of view, where in its interior there can be social coexistence in a more particular sense than that of any other dwelling.

CONCLUSIONS.

In conclusion, this work, shows that not always the trend is the solution to all the problems of the time, since this work at the time was the most modern thing that existed and unfortunately did not work as planned.

It does not comply with the main points of architecture, in this case of Architect Villagrán. I trust that we will learn from this type of work to generate better spaces and not make the same mistakes in the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Anonimo. (08 de Diciembre de 2021). Wikiarquitectura. Obtenido de Wikiarquitectura: https://es.wikiarquitectura.com/edificio/casa-farnsworth/

Arquitecturapura.     (08     de     Diciembre     de     2021).     Obtenido    de                      Arquitecturapura: https://www.arquitecturapura.com/estetica-y-arquitectura/

Villagran,     J.     (08     de     Diciembre     de     2021).     blogspot.     Obtenido    de blogspot: http://wasiruwaq.blogspot.com/2019/09/teoria-de-la-arquitectura-de-jose.html