Published time: 1950
...But, in the same year, certain Bauhaus schemes--most notably those of Farkas Molnar--do suggest the approach which has come to be considered as characteristic of modern architecture. In these we notice the abandoning of the idea of mass, a substitution of plane, an emphasis upon the prismatic quality of the cube; and at the same time an attack on the cube. which by disrupting the coherence of its internal volume, intensifies our appreciation of both its planar and its geometrical qualities. These are projects which appear as complete illustrations of the Giedionesque concept of space-time for which the Bauhaus is so justly famous. They are compositions which "the eye cannot sum up...at one view"; which "it is necessary to go around on all sides, to see... from above as well as from below."
The Red Cube. Farkas Molnar, 1923.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/red%20cube
Now, in itself, the idea of physical movement in the observation of a building is not new; and, if it formed a typical Baroque means for observing the rise and fall of masses, it is even more apparent in the irregular schemes of Romanticism. However, even they, let alone such symmetrical compositions as Blenheim, are usually provided with a single dominant element; and seen through the media of distance and atmosphere, the interrelationship of freely disposed masses is combined as a picturesque whole. It is clear that, through intellectual limitations do not enter into the megalomania of a Fonthill, the limitations of the eye, of human vision, are scrupulously observed.
But at the Bauhaus, while one registers mental appreciation of both plan and structure, the eye is faced with the disturbing problem of simultaneous impact from widely dispersed elements. A dominating central element is eliminated; subsidiary elements are thus unable to play a supporting role; and, in a state of visual autonomy, they are disposed around the void of the central bridge which neither provides visual explanation for them as a consistent scheme nor allows them to assume independence as separate units. In other words, with focus disallowed, the eye becomes stretched; and, noticing this, it might be suggested that the role of this bridge--as the fundamental core of the conception and as the negation of the visual function o f a central element--is closely related to that of the blank panel at La Chaux-de-Fonds. For, in a similar way, this bridge is both a source and a result of peripheral disturbances; and it is significant that only from a non-visual angle, the 'abstract' view from the air, can the Bauhaus become intelligible to the eye.
Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds. Le Corbusier, 1916
http://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/purism/le-corbusier/villa-schwob/
Bahaus, Dessau. Walter Gropius, 1925-26
In this idea of disturbing, rather than providing immediate pleasure for the eye, the element of delight in modern architecture appears chiefly to lie. An intense precision or an exaggerated rusticity of detail is presented within the bounds of a strictly conceived complex of planned obscurity; and a labyrinthine scheme is offered which frustrates the eye by intensifying the visual pleasure of individual episodes, in themselves only to become coherent as the result of a mental act of reconstruction.
Sixteenth century Mannerism is characterized by similar ambiguities; and, to proceed to comparison, a deliberate and insoluble spatial complexity might be thought to be offered equally by Michelangelo's Cappella Sforza and Mies van der Rohe's projec of 1923 for the Brick Country House.
Capella Sforza, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. Plan. Michelangelo Buonarotti, completed 1573.
Brick Country House. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,1923.
