When builders skillfully arbitrate between various oppositions, such as the ancient and the new, the natural and the artificial, the opulent and the modest, and the masculine and the feminine, beauty is likely to result. For many years, the courtyard in the center of the U-shaped Baroque structure that houses the Institute of Journalism in Eichstätt was unoccupied save for a bicycle rack and a tower bed. The institute’s trustees then ordered a new building from architect Karljosef Schattner in the middle of the 1980s due to space constraints. Schattner’s unabashedly modern concrete and glass block was placed into the empty space between the old gabled and ornamented wings.
Despite their striking stylistic differences, the ancient and new sections have nevertheless managed to create a peculiar codependence and a beguiling harmony in which each depends on the other to emphasize its attractions and minimize its flaws. When both buildings are taken together, they create a seductive synthesis of emotional temperaments; if one were removed, the other would become pedantically hidebound or brutally modern. Another reconciliation of opposites is created in the lobby of Louis Kahn’s Yale Center for British Art in New Haven by the interaction of English oak inset panels and concrete walls.
It’s difficult to think of two materials that have less in common than these two. The English have long held an idealized view of themselves due to the resilience, longevity, and grandeur of oak. Generations of gentlemen have read the Daily Telegraph in their clubs and dons have had lunch in Oxbridge colleges against backgrounds of highly textured oak. Charles II sought refuge among oak trees from Cromwell’s army, and Robin Hood also managed to elude justice there. Nelson’s navy’s ships and Westminster Abbey’s ceiling were both made of English oak. Thus, associations with history, country life, nobility, leather and whisky scents, and idealized ideas of national identity float around the polished wood panels. Concrete, a substance that epitomizes economy, speed, and, in its reinforced variant, brute might, is far from all of this.
Architects’ rediscovery of this distinctly modern and democratic material in the early 20th century allowed for the construction of numerous obviously functional structures of the technological age, such as grain silos, garages, tower blocks, and warehouses. But Kahn, like a shrewd hostess confronted with a pair of dinner guests from diametrically different worlds, assists these two unlike elements in realizing the merits of one another and overcoming their mutual mistrust. By not attempting to conceal or minimize their differences, he is able to bring people together. Fearless in exposing the bareness of his concrete and in highlighting its starkness and poverty, Kahn invites us to find a new type of beauty in its elephant-grey massing.
Simultaneously, he allows us to fully appreciate and rejoice in the traditional delights of oak, showcasing its warm tones, clarity, and striated grain, all of which have been bestowed upon it over time. The Yale Center for British Art offers a sophisticated analysis of how the past and present could learn to coexist and enhance one another, all within the walls of a building devoted to the artworks of a country more tormented than most by the conflicting claims of history and modernity. By doing this, it provides us with a sketch of what an ideal modern English person would look like. Another structure, high in the Italian Alps, eases a similar conflict between the rural and the urban, as well as the agricultural and the industrial.
The Stone House by Herzog and de Meuron is made up of an open concrete framework that is filled with loose, mortarless stones that were extracted from the nearby slopes. These stones are of the kind that have been used for ages to construct the barns and farmhouses in the area; only the logical geometry of their concrete frame keeps them from falling into rustic incoherence due to their wildly erratic color and shape. Similar to Kahn’s Yale Center, Herzog and de Meuron’s home accomplishes its beauty by combining two distinct aesthetic strands that is, two happinesses we never would have thought to go together to create a beautiful pattern.
To explain the appeal of balance between contrasting elements in buildings, it seems natural to broaden the discussion beyond architecture, because it is not only visual beauty that draws us to these balanced works, but also, and perhaps most importantly, the evidence they emit of possessing a distinctively human kind of goodness or maturity. It appears that we are unable to refrain from semiconsciously reading our own dynamics into buildings and associating the oppositions displayed by some examples with warring sides of our own personalities. The tension between curves and straight lines on a façade is symbolic of our own struggle between reason and emotion.
Unvarnished wood reflects human integrity, whereas gilded panels evoke human hedonism. Glass panes with flower impressions and black concrete blocks (seen on the outside walls of the University Library in Utrecht) appear to be natural twins of masculine and feminine features. As a result, the equilibrium we admire in architecture and label as ‘beautiful’ alludes to a psychological state that we may characterize as mental health or happiness. We, like structures, contain opposing forces that can be dealt with more or less successfully. We can fall into extremes such as anarchy or rigidity, decadence or austerity, macho. However, we recognize that our well-being relies on our ability to accept and balance out polarities.
The world around us might make it difficult to reconcile our various qualities, emphasizing unwanted contrasts. Some people believe it’s impossible to be both amusing and serious, democratic and conservative, cosmopolitan and rustic, practical and exquisite, or manly and delicate. Buildings that are well-balanced invite reflection. Take, for example, the conventional opposition between luxury and simplicity.
The concept of luxury has traditionally been linked with grandeur, pomposity, and arrogance, whereas simplicity has been associated with squalor, incompetence, and inelegance. However, the interior of Skogaholm Manor in Sweden, decorated at the end of the eighteenth century, defies any inclination to rule out the combination of these two qualities. The furniture has a refined Rococo style, with smooth curves and floral garlands. But as the eye moves to the ground, something unexpected appears. Instead of the expected marble or veneered parquetry floor, the chairs meet raw, unpainted wooden planks similar to those found in a hayloft.
A similarly startling mix can be found in the wall decorations, where Neoclassical moral motifs, which would normally be painted in bright reds and golds, are instead rendered in subdued greys and browns.