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HENRI LABROUSTE : BIBLIOTHEQUE SAINTE - GENEVIEVE

ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE FIRST YEAR - HISTORY AND STUDIES TERM 2 WILL ORR

LATITUDINAL SECTION

LONGITUDINAL ELEVATION

FLOOR PLAN

DRAWING N0 1 MODERNISATION OF HENRI LABROUSTE’S BIBLIOTHEQUE SAINTE - GENEVIEVE ISOMETRIC SECTION

DRAWING N0 2 IN THE STYLE OF BRAMANTE FLOOR PLAN - SYMMERTRICAL ON VERTICAL AXIS

DRAWING N0 3 SPACE INFORMED BY LIGHT WATERCOLOUR IN NEGATIVE

Henri Labrouste: Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève I. CONTEXT II. ASPECTS

a.

Identity Card b. Niches

c.

Space in Light III. CONCLUSION I.

As the nineteenth century dawns upon France, a revolutionary spirit reverberates throughout the populace, ensuing – apart from new political orders – an overhaul of architectural ideology, ordinarily recurrent within the industrial sectors.

Public architecture, however, still lays under the influence of the Ècole des Beaux-Arts, and therefore feels less generous in incorporating the material and technological advancements of the industrial era.

Iron remains concealed within masonry encasements until its breakthrough as an alternative of similar “monumental grandeur”1 to bronze in Jakob Ignaz Hittorf’s restoration of the Place de la Concorde, carried out between 1833 and 1846.

By the time Henri Labrouste employs cast iron in the design of the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève, the material becomes customary in practice of fire-proofing public buildings. Still, the construction distinguishes itself as an architectural piece of considerable testimony following its inauguration in 1850, due to its innovative programme – the public library – and its structural, and aesthetical characteristics.

II. Identity Card (DRAWING N0 1)

Having been awarded the Prix de Rome for a proposition of a court of cassation, Henri Labrouste moves into the Villa Medici in Rome in the year 1824. While the bursary allows him a stay of five years at the expense of the French state, it also requires he submits a yearly portfolio of studies and renderings of exemplary pieces of roman architecture.

In his fourth year of Italian inquisition, the Frenchman proposes a restoration of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum. His design is received with shock, as the panel of jurors stand before a drawing depicting the ancient sanctuary undressed of any expected decorative pieces. In the rendered image, the temple is given nothing more than a reparation of its ruins and a tiled roof. Statues portraying the deity, engravings of symbolic nature, or mosaics disclosing ancient roman myths are omitted in favour of architecture reduced to its elementary.

What is then in nascent state, Labrouste later reiterates in a letter to his brother, Theodore:

I want to teach them to deal with very simple means. They must first see clearly the destination of their work […]. Then, I explain that the soundness of their buildings depends mostly on the combination of materials and mass and, for they must already be aware of the principles of construction, I tell them to take the very construction for reasonable, expressive ornamentation. I often tell them that art has the power to embellish everything; but I insist that they understand that form, in architecture, should always be subordinate to its function. 2

This isolated quote reminds one of ideas propagated by modernist architects of the twentieth century. Rightfully so, since the library holds a reputation as “ur-building of the modern period”3 with its “independent framework of iron, elegant and poised, albeit encased still within a masonry carcass”4.

This incipient separation enables Henri Labrouste a revision of the visual vocabulary of the public building, thus rejecting Renaissance’s concern for “impressing the eye with façades of borrowed ornament”5. Instead of eccentric mouldings, the elevation perpetuates an index of authors, a carved garland, and iron bosses. The latter elements act similarly to bolts, protruding from the skeleton within the masonry shell in order to hold it up. Moreover, they divide the walls into nineteen bays across a length of eighty five meters, and four bays across a width of twenty one meters.

The longitudinal bays hold, besides the grand clerestory windows, smaller fenestrations to allow light streaming into the passages hidden by interior walls. As those nieces serve the practical issues of mobility and storage within the

library, the reading room is left a vast space to facilitate research in unhindered concentration.

Such minimal division of space expresses the French architect’s rational construction ideals, which “had laid down the principle that in the design of buildings form should always be appropriated to […] function”6.

It seems therefore, that the integrity of the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève is strongly associated with space built in truth, rather than ornamentation, and should be capable of withstanding a loss of identity even when altered in terms of material, or technologies.

Similarly to Henri Labrouste’s intention when proposing the restoration of the temple at Paestum, the drawing displays the essence of the Parisian library by employing a modernisation of its encasement.

The framework continues its task of surface reinforcement by use of the punctuating bosses for spider-clamps, ordinarily found in most glazed buildings in order to sustain the glass panels which replace inner walls. The arches remain in order to negate the forces of outward thrust. The surrounding corridors are also carried on into the contemporary rendition of the library, as means of deviating and compacting circulation.

The product of such action is meagre visually speaking, but all the more powerful in terms of pointing out the roundness of Labrouste’s design, which, in spite of suffering an aesthetical alteration, remains unmistakable.

Niches (DRAWING N0 2)

The years spent in the Medici Villa in Rome seem to leave a greater impression on the French architect than at first detectable. By taking a closer look at the masonry enclosure of the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève, one will discover an invalidated premise: what are thought to be solid two metres thick walls, reveal themselves as a smaller space made of niches, which serve the purpose of storage and circulation.

Henri Labrouste’s renaissantist control of space, scale, and proportion 7 resembles both that of Donato Bramante and that of Michelangelo Buonarroti, situating him medially between the two.

In the case of the former Italian architect, the niche becomes a solution for meliorating the weight of the wall.

It serves no other practical purpose, and is therefore often being left empty in most proposals. The recess becomes a sort of ornamental element, confining almost with the Frenchman’s theory that “construction, artfully expressed, would bear decorative function” 8. He, however, takes the statement made to its proper potential by exhausting all practical possibilities of the cavities in the walls of the Parisian Library. By slightly projecting the pilasters into the space of the reading room, Henri Labrouste designs alcoves which are tailored to the size of the bookshelves installed subsequently.

This puzzle like proposal prompts the illusion of flush walls made of books acting as though they were bricks.

The mediation of furniture and architecture is present as an antecedent in Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence, where the sculptor makes use of the reading benches tailored to human proportion as bracing to the thin walls which needed implementation due to the library being built atop a formerly present building. Such interventions were common in the sixteenth century, as “economy and convenience were guides to the choice of site, and preoccupation with utility moulded to the plan”9. Yet, Michelangelo strives to impose his sculptural sensitivity over the architectural one, coming thus to proposals such as phony windows and structural walls, or staircases that flood the confinements of a space, rather than leaving it open.

In the case of the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève, furniture has no load bearing function, as the iron framework, a medieval system were it not for the use of modern materials, eases the weight of the forces laid upon the structure.

The drawing, a floorplan made in the style of Donato Bramante – with marks from the etching of guides visible under the stamp like print of walls – reveals the planning of the library’s bounding masonry. Not unlike Bramante’s own designs, Labrouste’s building can be mirrored – albeit on a single axis. Therefore, half of a floorplan is sufficient in representing the entire construction, and successful in voicing its repetitive character much alike that of the Laurentian Library.

Space in Light (DRAWING N0 3) Yet another characteristic which seems to have been borrowed from the Italian sculptor, painter, architect & co. is the choice of elevating the windows above eye height. While in the Italian design, this elevation occurs on ground of structural reasoning and becomes occasionally secondary – resulting in fictive fenestration - , Henri Labrouste’s clerestory lucarns derive from a preoccupation with the opening hours of the public library, and its programme.

Being one of the first institutions to be open after sunset in the University Quarter of Paris, the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève not only introduces an inaugural use of gas electricity, but it also grants special attention to the idea of light

which informs the design of space. Thus, the slim spine of columns of the Composite order delivers an optical elevation to the interior of the library’s reading room, and allows for an uninterrupted stream of light coming through the enormous clerestory windows. The exposed iron columns and arches, highly designed and decorative, start to evaporate in the bath of photons, reinforcing thus the vasteness of the main lodging.

Symbolically, the levels of brightness in the library represent the visitor’s rise from cultural ignorance to knowledge: the vestibule on the ground floor is a small confinement with no windows, where a central axis guides one from the entrance to the illuminated stairs on the intermediate level; the last floor holds the vivid reading room. The corridor surrounding the latter space, as well as two other rooms flanking the vestibule are less flooded with light, as all of them are meant for the storage of photosensitive books.

It seems that in the case of the Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève, “architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light […]: [where] light and shade reveal those forms”10 in accordance to the programme of an institution made available to use by students which sought no distraction from their research, even in the dusk of days. The library becomes a machine for learning in 11.

The power of the streaming light is evocated in a negative watercolour drawing, where the medium alludes to the shapes of the reading room through fine brush strokes. The paint fills the boundary almost completely, demonstrating thus the absence of architectural obstructions in the centre of the space.

III.

The Bibliothèque Sainte – Geneviève mediates elementary architectural items in order to design a space appropriate to its function. The mastery with which scale and materials were given consideration results in a building revolutionary for in its refined details, albeit still implementing a standard enclosure.

1 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 (Eck on Hitthorff’s Resoration) 2 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 3 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 4 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 5 - James Ackerman, “The Architecture of Michelangelo”. Second Edition, p. 95 6 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 7 - James Ackerman, “The Architecture of Michelangelo”. Second Edition, p. 96 8 - R. Middleton, “The Iron Structure of the Bibliotheque Sainte - Genevieve as (Winter 1999), pp. 33-52 9 - James Ackerman, “The Architecture of Michelangelo”. Second Edition, p. 98 10 - Le Corbusier, “Towards an Architecture” (1923) 11 - Le Corbusier, “Towards an Architecture” (1923)

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