Minimalism and Minimal Art

Vania Collazo Pequeño Materiality of Architecture

Minimal Architecture and Minimal Art A study about the similarities in terms of materiality and premises.

As throughout all of history, art has tried a series of movements that can be considered as the development of earlier works and consequence of political and economic events of the moment. Thus, although the term that we refer to as minimalism is coined in 1968, is the evolution of certain existing movements from the first half of SXX. Since the change of century, and because of their opposition to Art Nouveau, a group of artists will create new artistic movements, which we call "the vanguards". At the same time, a group was created in the architectural field against modernism; of all them, probably the most important, Adolf Loos, whose article "Ornament and Crime" condemns the Art Noveau for their interest in having a excessive control over the Theo van Doesburg entire field in which designs, while commenting on the Barcelona Pavillion, Mies van der Rohe need to use only the properties of materials as decoration in homes.

As the epitome of what someday said Loos, Mies van der Rohe used t he particular characteristics of each material as an ornament, as we observe in the Barcelona Pavilion (19281929). The structural sincerity, the use of the natural qualities of materials and plant harvest was free to get over all his work is present in this small project part of a Universal Exposition. This feature will make it related with neoplasticist artists like Mondrian, though he always denied that there was some connection. Other architects had a closer relationship with the artistic movements, such as Rietveld Schröder and his house, which cannot deny its similarity with the pictures of Theo van Doesburg.

Schröder House, Rietveld

By mid-century, fully established the International Style, Luis Barragรกn is a really special example of the first projects of Minimal Architecture. Being sensitive to the European models from Modern Movement in his first works, he abandoned this lines in their last work, but maintaining that close relation with the vernacular Mediterranean Architecture. Even most of his work is from the 50s, he achieved international recognition after the major exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in New York

by Emilio Ambasz in 1976, turning him into an architectural case study. Some of his exemplary formal solutions (frameless windows in his house, waterfilled tanks at the Drinking Trough fountain and at Tlalpan Chapel, an innovative use of color, accurately and efficiently simple construction techniques, use of natural materials) or themes (sense of void, silence, a rediscovered need for peace and spirituality) were subject to detailed analysis by architects like Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura.

The term minimalism was coined, above all, as a means of describing in laudatory terms or in a reductive and strongly critical manner the works by protagonists of the American art scene in the late Fifties and Sixties, like Donald Judd, Sol le Witt, Robert Morris, Rchicard Serra and Dan Flavin. These figures in fact used formal austerity and a marked reduction in expressive media to counter the exuberance of Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting and the aesthetic compromises brought about by the phenomena of mass culture typical of Pop Art. The same term was then used to describe phenomena in a wide variety of fields: from music to theatre, literature, graphics, design and even fashion, not to mention dance, cinema and photography; and also in architecture, where minimalism proposes a new idea of the use of space, scale and sense of the building as a whole thing.

Luis Barragรกn

In architecture the phenomenon was recognized and labeled above all in the mid Eighties, describing the earliest projects of architects as John Pawson and reclassifying 10 years of Tadao Ando’s work; it even included the Luis Barragån later works. As in Minimal Art, Minimal Architecture talks about the presence, nor the essence of the piece of art, working with simple forms, economy of language and media, reduction and synthesis, simplicity, and what concerns to us, literal use of the materials. So close is the relationship between Minimalist Art and Architectural Minimalism that artist such as Donald Judd played with the use of scale reaching the human scale or the scale of Architecture. Also the sculptor produces the emerge of minimalist design with his work in the furniture sector in 1978.

Donald Judd, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX

As an important part, the choice of materials is an important part from the Minimalist piece, nor in the sense of Brutalism, but in the use of the materials just as they are, but prioritizing the interpretation of the work of art as a unity.

Polished materials, with the minimal joints and different characteristics between the materials will be important for this intention.

Tadao Ando was one of the first to enter the field of architectural minimalism where he occupies an important position and he is one of the most important representatives of this group. He fuses ancient and moden Japanese simplicity with a refined and innovative interpretation of the values of ancient Japanese architecture. The sense of being in a place is of great value to Ando, within the constant, magmatic and extremely rapid daily movements of the whole modern Japanese society. Light, shadow, calm and silence surround this attempt, albeit still pervaded by subtle questions and concerns, to attain this condition of tranquility, to build places in which man can live poetically, so many of his buildings are characterized by simplicity and introversion and by the use of fairfaced concrete both externally and internally which, in terms of craftsmanship, is so well made that it has a smooth almost silky texture.

Tadao Ando, Pulitzer foundationfor the Arts, St. Louis, Missouri, USA , 1992-2001

We can talk from another architects from this group, but there are some architects that are inside this group only for one project. We can see the Carl André’s sculpture called “Lament for the children” and make a clear analogy with one of the most important projects from Peter Eisenman, the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Both of them are based in the same idea, and the characteristics of minimal art are in the two cases: the material, the presence of the sculpture more that the essence and the look of the building as a unity.

Carl André, Lamet for the Children (1976-1996)

Peter Eisenmann, Holocaust memorial, Berlin, 2005

Tony Smith, 1952, Die

Herzog & de Meuron, Signal Box, Basel

Goetz Gallerie

Following the premise of the important of the piece of art as a whole thing, the presence more than the essence, there’s a series of pieces of art known as “black boxes”; the piece is always a solid box of certain material without any expression of its inside. Some architects translate this to the building scale, where the function and the inside of the building are in second place, predominating the exterior expression and how the material conforms the envelope.

Herzog and de Meuron and their first works are the most important expression of this group. Projects like the Signal Box in Basel (in corten steel), the Goetz Gallerie in Munich (glass and plywood) or the Library of the Eberswalde Technical School are clear examples of that idea of basing the project in a simple cube to play with the materials and textures in the façades.

Library of the Eberswalde Technical School

Antón García Abril in his Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales (Santiago de Compostela), follows the idea of the “Black Box” but changing the premises of the Minimalist Art (at least in the envelope): heavy rather than light, opaque rather than transparent, rough rather than smooth. At a time when much of the built environment aspires to the unachievable lightness, transparency, and smoothness of digital culture, it's just great to see architecture that embraces its antithesis. The stone exterior exhibits many qualities besides merely weight or mass. It resembles rock hewn almost directly from the quarry. Its stacking creates a striated appearance that makes another allusion to its place of formation. Its lack of smoothness exhibits efficiency from unnecessary cutting and smoothing, something more common to corporate architecture, though increasingly the province of higher education.

Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales_ Santiago de Compositela, Spain_Antón García Abril

The Dominique Perrault APLIX factory can also be inside this group. Having a close connection with Robert Morris sculptures, the visible material is slightly burnished metal sheeting. An idealized expression of agricultural buildings, it reflects the surrounding nature dissolving the building in the landscape. The rigorous conception of the composition's masses an d their effects remains subject to variation. Extensions are possible via the aleatory articulation of supplementary squares, which would thus create visual irregularities, notably in the frontal view.

Robert Morris

Dominique Perrault, APLIX Factory, Nantes, France, 1997-99

Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas is a Spanish architect specialized in restoration projects. Looking for a project related with the “Black Box” idea but in different materials, his Huéscar Keep is a good example made all in wood. Trying to be the most respectful that they can with the old building, the project is a ramp all made with wood that is going up to allow the visitor to see the landscape and the village.

Torre del Homenaje, Huéscar, Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas

As an example in the Japanese group, Sanaa dwellings are clear examples of this side of minimalism. The house in a plum grove or the CASA-S are two buckets, one in meta l and the other with a polyurethane coat, that open inward, leaving the outside as something alien.

Lacaton & Vassal, Palais de Tokio, Paris, 2002

Sanaa_CASA-S Okayama, Japan 1997,.

At this point, and although not consider within what is considered today as architectural minimalism, we consider a category of architects who use the concepts of minimal art mixing it with proper ties that the architecture has itself, as the

social experience that occurs inside of a building instead of outside, like in a piece of art. The dissolution of spatial boundaries will happen also in the interior of the building. To achieve these transitional qualities, architecture abandoned the formal canon derived f  rom minimal architecture to look for architectural processes that place the building in a relationship with its context. In the Lacaton and Vassal’s Palais de Tokio in Paris, we can observe that the basis on treating the materials in that smooth, polished way have not change from the first approaches in Essential Minimalism, showing (or suggesting) a clearness in the structural way that we can see in  how they treat the different surfaces, the idea of relationship between spaces, of how the inside is colonized by the people who is using it is totally different from the first examples.

Peter Zumthor takes really care about materials, and it becomes really near to the premises of Minimalism Art. But, unlike to other architects this relation with Minimalism is a consequence of his first steps in the project development.

Zumthor always emphasizes the sensory aspects of the architectural experience.

For him, the physicality of materials can involve an individual qith the wold, evoking experiences and texturing horizons of the plane through memory. The architect choreographs materials according to their evocative qualities, as we can see in the Vals Spa.

RCR, Rough Rock Park, Spain

RCR, pond in La Vila de Trincheria, Spain

In this group but in a separate point, as the scale and the surroundings on the sculpture or building are really important, the landscaping would be related sometimes with it. In that case, the use of materials would be essential for assuming that relation between the two fields. Spanish group RCR, in their Pedra Tosca Park, use the corten steel to support all the weight of the rocks to make different paths between them. The use of the material, and the idea of gravity sustaining the rocks, is similar to the Richard Serra explanation about their sculptures, the relation with the gravity and how the sculpture lands in the site.

Other projects from this firm that would be mentioned are the kindergarden “Els Colors”, the hotel “les Cols” and the pond in La Vila de Trincheria, which, as we can see in the image, has a big similarity to Barragan’s work.

The rise of minimalism is not only an evolution of earlier movements. The development and expansion of communications in recent years caused a greater amount of information that can be shared faster, making the work of different architects viewed almost instantaneously around the world during the project and completed. This has led minimalism as a global movement, delocalized and neutral, in which the interest is decreasing in the symbolic dimension.

RCR _ Guardería Els Colors _ Spain

The definition of minimal architecture changed for the last 30 years; however, how we use the materials and that idea of clearness in the use of the material with their own properties is still there, and every time we make an advance using new technologies or new materials, that idea reflects an intention of making it structurally and materially truthful. To use Mies van der Rohe’s words: “We need not less but more technology.

We see in technology the possibility of freeing ourselves… We don’t need less science, but a science that is more spiritual… All that will only become possible when man asserts himself in objective nature and relates to himself”

Hotel Les Cols, Spain