LANDSCAPES & ARCHITECTURE: EUGENE VIOLLET-LE-DUC
“Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect and author who restored many prominent medieval landmarks in France [including] Notre-Dame Cathedral... His later writings on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a notable influence on a new generation of architects, including Antoni Gaudí, Victor Horta, and Louis Sullivan. ”
“Viollet-le-Duc’s geological work follows closely from his work as medieval archeologist and architect. Having spent his life studying the play of structural forces that operate in buildings, whether medieval or modern ... he passed to the contemplation of the same primary laws and forces working in nature on the grandest scale.
For eight years between 1868 and 1876, he used his summer vacation to study and measure Mont Blanc, the greatest of European mountains. His first aim was the preparation of a complete and systematic map of the region under survey – a goal he achieved spectacularly with the production of a huge and stunning chromolithographic plan ‘view’ of the massif ‘as if it had been photographed from an altitude of 10,000 meters’. Thanks to a graphical method using subtly graduated light and shade, he could produce a vivid representation of the configuration of the slopes, with its hollows and recesses, and the sharp and abrupt contour of the mountain peaks.”
CONSTRUCTING THE UNCANNY: MARY SHELLEY
The Mer de Glace on the north side of Mont Blanc, explored by John Tyndall and Thomas Archer Hirst and guide in July 1857. Here in Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein has an unwelcome meeting with his creature. Created 1896.
“Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dôme overlooked the valley.
A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.”
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
FORCES, DIAGRAMS, AND FORMS
“Drawing and painting were fundamental to Hadid’s practice. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, she used calligraphic drawings as the main method for visualising her architectural ideas. For Hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in. These works on paper and canvas unravel an architecture that Hadid was determined to realise in built structures, and is seen in the characteristic lightness and weightlessness of her buildings. Conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, the show revealed her all-encompassing visions of arranging space and interpreting realities.
Many of Hadid’s paintings pre-empt the potential of digital and virtual reality. Technology and innovation has always been central to the work of Zaha Hadid Architects. As Patrik Schumacher, Director, Zaha Hadid Architects said: “It was Zaha Hadid who went first and furthest in exploring this way of innovating in architecture – without, as well as with, the support of advanced software.””
