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Of stylised species and

specious styles

Amy Kulper University of Michigan, USA

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity is

the essential. In all important matters, style, notsincerity, is the essential.

Oscar Wilde, 1894

To what do we attribute the current profusion of

biomorphic forms in our discipline? When architec-

tural practices employ versioning or rapid prototyp-

ing technologies, how do we account for the

impetus to represent development? When imple-

menting a parametric design, why do architects will-

ingly cede creative control to recombinant

geometries? If rapid prototyping imagines the con-

flation of design and fabrication through automatedmanufacturing, what are the disciplinary con-

sequences of these compressed processes of archi-

tectural design and production? Lurking behind all

of these questions is the spectre of the species-

style metaphor, and understanding the cultural

conditions under which it was first formulated and

propagated will shed some light on current architec-

tural practices and predilections. To accomplish this,

we must return to the nineteenth century.

The year is 1851, and as visitors crowd into

Paxtons Crystal Palace to attend the Great Exhibi-

tion, they witness a quite literal form of cultural

transparency. Housed within this extensive glass

wrapper, visitors find every sort of technological,

ethnographic, artistic, agricultural, and geological

exhibit imaginable (Fig. 1). For those visitors

curious about the odd juxtaposition of sculpture

and soil sample, painting and pigeon, maquette

and machine, a glance at the official guidebook

offers this explanation: Within the Palace itself,

we have been enabled to remark the works of

man, and the gradual development of his ideas,especially in Art, leading to a variety of so-called

styles, which answer in a measure to the varied

species of Divinely created life.1 The analogy of

species and style in this description is the result of

an ongoing process of immanentisation, in which

external nature is conflated with human inner

nature through the identification of common vital

tendencies. This conflation ultimately fosters the

human appropriation of the natural worlds creative

or generative capacities.2 This paper will begin with

a cursory description of certain formative momentsin the development of the species-style metaphor

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it will

identify and describe operative categories of the

metaphorspecifically, stylised species and spe-

cious stylesand consider how the work of Gott-

fried Semper, Georges Cuvier, Owen Jones, Ernst

Haeckel, and Karl Blossfeldt epitomises these dispa-

rate classifications; it will examine the role of the

species-style metaphor in Victor Hortas architecture;

and it will conclude with some speculations about

the impact of this organic metaphor on contempo-

rary architectural discourse and practice.

How did the species-style metaphor become such

a commonplace by the middle of the nineteenth

century? For the answer to this question we would

have to go back to 1750 when, prior to writing his

seminal Geschichte der Kunst Alterthums (an

account of the history of Greek art), Johann

Joachim Winckelmann spent four years poring

over Georges Buffons Histoire Naturelle. What did

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# 2006 The Journal of Architecture 13602365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360601037693


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Winckelmann, an historian of ancient art, glean from

Buffons detailed botanical accounts? From Buffon he

acquired a meticulously historicised sense of nature

and natural species, which he developed into an

equally historicised sense of style. In the introduction

to his text, Winckelmann writes: The history of art is

intended to show the origin, progress, change, and

downfall of art, together with the different styles of

nations, periods and artists, and to prove the whole

as far as it is possible, from the ancient monuments

now in existence.3 Implicit in Winckelmanns descrip-

tion of the origin, progress, change, and downfall of

artistic style, is a parallel notion of biological change:

birth, teleological development, transformation, and

death. Clearly, this enterprise involves the appropria-

tion of the idea of the lifespan of the biological

species and its application to artistic style. Winckel-

manns emphasis on proof is also imported from

natural history where it is used to establish coherence

or identity between an individual specimen and the

species to which it belongs. Ultimately, the absolute

certainty of this coherence between specimen and

species, between art object and style, led Winckel-

mann to speculate about the possibility of style

being biologically transmitted.4

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe equally contributed

to the formulation of the species-style metaphor in

the eighteenth century. Between 1786 and 1788,

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specious styles

Amy Kulper

Figure 1. Taxonomy of

the Great Exhibition of

1851; from: 1851 Great

Exhibition Official

Catalogue with

Alphabetical and

Classified Index and

Price Lists (London,

William Clowes & Sons,

1851). Photograph

credit: Research Library,

The Getty Research

Institute, Los Angeles,

California (93-B19896).


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he traveled to Italy where he studied the art and

architecture of classical antiquity as well as botany.

In an essay published the year after he returned

entitled Simple Imitation of Nature, Manner,Style, Goethes aesthetic and scientific interests

merged. Concerning the visual arts, he writes:

It is obvious that . . . an artist can only become

greater and more significant if he adds to his

talents the expertise of a botanist; if he knows

the influence of the different plants, from the

roots upwards, and their continuing and mutual

effect; if he observes and reflects on the succes-

sive development of the leaves, flowers, sex

organs, fruit and the new seed. Then he will not

simply demonstrate his taste by his choice ofsubject, but he will astonish and enlighten us by

his accurate representation of these character-

istics: and in this sense it could be said that he

has formed a style.5

It is significant that Goethe turns to botany in his

description of style, not only because he is propaga-

ting the species-style metaphor, but also because he

brings to architectural discourse the possibility of

considering the development of form, for which

he coined the term morphology. In this sense,

Goethe provides one of the earliest examples of

explicit morphological thinking about architecture:

he redefines style as the accurate representation of

development.6 How does Goethes morphological

definition of style manifest itself aesthetically? If

we consider his notion of the poetic moment in

which he theorises that what is useful in one histori-

cal period becomes representational in the next, we

witness an historical account of style that owes its

confusion of causation with temporal succession to

biological discourse.7 For Goethe, the poetic

moment accounts for the imitation of the language

of wood construction in ancient stone temples, and

proffers a theory of stylistic development thatcogently explains this phenomenon. When applied

to natural history, Goethes morphology eschews

teleology; the development of form is not to be

understood as development towards an explicit

goal. In fact, he claims that teleology has obstructed

the progress of natural history, although he is sym-

pathetic to the human desire to ascribe intention

to natures actions: Moreover, in himself and

others he justifiably puts the greatest value on

actions and deeds which are intentional and purpo-

seful. It follows that he will attribute intent andpurpose to nature, for he will be unable to form a

larger concept of nature than of himself.8 For

Goethe, one of the great advantages of morphology

is its capacity to operate independentlyit does not

belong to chemistry, or biology, or botany, or art

historybut it establishes an autonomous vantage

point of formal development that potentially

benefits each of these disciplines.9 Finally, Goethe

positions morphology as a critique of vitalist ten-

dencies in the sciences. The formation and trans-

formation of organic bodies is not attributed to

the actions of a vital inner source, but to the recipro-

city of intrinsic forces and extrinsic conditions.

This brief examination of Winckelmann and

Goethe supplies some of the necessary background

to an understanding of the species-style metaphor in

the nineteenth century. At this juncture, it is impor-

tant to ask how this conceptual conflation operates

metaphorically. Paul Ricoeur argues that metaphor is

the result of the tension between two opposed

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interpretations in an utterance.10 In the case of the

species-style metaphor, the opposed interpretations

would be the diversity of species produced by

natures generative capacity versus the variety ofstyles produced by humanitys creative genius. Also

essential to the metaphor for Ricoeur is the appear-

ance of kinship where ordinary vision does not per-

ceive any relationship.11 With regard to the

species-style metaphor, this kinship is the tacit

belief that natures generative capacity and human-

itys creative genius are similar productive processes.

Ricoeur concludes, A metaphor, in short, tells us

something new about reality.12 At its best, the

species-style metaphor elucidates the similarities

and differences between techniques for naturaland cultural production and between the classifica-

tory schemas for objects of nature and culture.

If species refers to the appearance or outward

form of an organism as the criterion for identity

and classification, and style emerges from a rhetori-

cal context in which it refers to the internal coher-

ence of nature, then how do we arrive at the

terminology of stylised species and specious

styles?13 With specious styles, the similarities

between two opposed interpretations are seized

upon at the expense of their respective differences.

The metaphor tells us nothing new about reality;

in fact, it is a dead metaphor by virtue of its reified

meaning and frequent usage. The conflation of

species and style is due to the historical process of

immanentisation in which style loses its rhetorical

connotation as the internal coherence of nature

and comes to be understood as the internal coher-

ence of human inner nature. This shift renders

style a contingency of personal preference and

individual taste. Simultaneously, style lost the

ethical content of its rhetorical meaning, in which

acting in accordance with nature meant possessing

the knowledge to act appropriately in a given situ-ation. When style began increasingly to emulate

species in the nineteenth century, it merely took on

the appearance of an accordance with nature.14

The examination of a handful of late nineteenth

century architects and naturalists, including

Semper, Blossfeldt, Jones and Haeckel, will lend cre-

dence to the above categorisations of stylised

species and specious styles. Gottfried Semper, who

designed the Canadian, Danish, Egyptian and

Swedish displays for the Crystal Palace, was no

stranger to the issues of classification and displayraised in the exhibition organisation. While studying

in Paris between 1826 and 1830, he often visited the

Jardin des Plantes and became particularly fasci-

nated by the displays of fossils and skeletons

arranged by the great naturalist Georges Cuvier.

Cuviers contribution to biological taxonomy is the

assertion that the classification of organisms

should be based upon their function, their form

being simply a result of that function. In a lecture

given in 1853, Semper speculates about the possible

applications of this principle to architecture: Such a

method, similar to the one followed by Baron Cuvier,

when applied to art and especially to architecture,

would at least help to gain a clear survey of the

whole field and perhaps even the basis of a theory

of style and a kind of Topica or method of invention,

which could lead to some knowledge of the natural

process of invention.15

Thus, for Semper, Cuviers classification according

to the behaviour and function of species becomes

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the inspiration for a theory of architectural style

linked explicitly to natural operations of production.

When Semper defines style as . . . the accord of an

object with its genesis, and with all preconditionsand circumstances of its becoming, he re-orients

the species-style metaphor toward issues of emer-

gence.16 Thus, in preserving the tensional play of

the species-style metaphor, Sempers contributions

fall under the category of stylised species. Semper

engages two opposed interpretations: the ordering

of species according to their respective functions

and the ordering of architectural style according to

function or type. He intuits the appearance of

kinship by grasping parallel processes of natural

and cultural invention. In his hands, the species-style metaphor reveals something new about

reality; specifically, that both species and style can

encompass and accommodate formal emergence.

Karl Blossfeldt, a botanist who began teaching in

Berlin in 1898, organised a plate archive of plant

photographs from which he made prints for instruc-

tional use. In 1928, when he published the first

120 plates of Urformen der Kunst, a collection of

plant specimens to be shared with fellow botanists,

he could not have anticipated their tremendous

impact on aesthetic discourse. His photographic

reproductions, like this image of a common

monkshood plant, were enlarged anywhere from

three to fifteen times their original size, replicating

the experience of viewing botanical specimens

under a microscope (Fig. 2). The premise of these

photographs is that to see nature magnified is to

be privy to its inner workings, the vital spirit that

animates its creative process. In a 1928 review of

Blossfeldts work, Walter Benjamin remarks: When

we remember that [Paul] Klee and, even more

[Vassily] Kandinsky, worked for so long on the elab-

oration of forms which only the intervention of the

microscope couldbrusquely and violentlyreveal

to us, we notice that these enlargements of

the plants also contain original stylistic forms

[Stilformen].17 In Blossfeldts work Benjamin is

seeing original stylistic forms within the magnifi-

cation of the species. Here, the species-style meta-

phor introduces vitalism to aesthetic discourse and

offers the possibility that original stylistic forms

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The Journal

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Figure 2. Plate 96 fro

Karl Blossfeldts

Urformen der Kunst

illustrating a common

monkshood plant

enlarged six times;

from: Art Forms in

Nature, Karl Blossfeldt

(London, A. Zwemmer

1929). Photograph

credit:# 2006 Karl

Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann

U. Jurgen Wilde, Koln

Artists Rights Society

(ARS), NY.


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need not reside in hypothetical historical precedents

such as the primitive hut, so central to eighteenth

century debates on the origins of architecture, but

are, rather, innate, acting as stylistic catalysts todeveloping forms. Blossfeldts photographs preserve

the tension of the species-style metaphor, and in this

sense, would be categorised as stylised species. The

two opposed interpretations of the metaphor in his

work are the scientific and aesthetic fetishism of

organic form. Microscopic magnification reveals a

kinship where ordinary vision does not perceive a

relationship: in this case, the potential for vitalism

to have both scientific and aesthetic applications.

Finally, the metaphor reveals something new about

reality when it posits the possibility that bothnatural andcultural objects contain original stylistic

forms [Stilformen].

To the species-style metaphor, Owen Jones, the

architect who designed the colour scheme of the

interior structure for the Crystal Palace, contributes

the idea that nature is not the only material suitable

for taxonomic description and organisation.

Through Joness publications the possibility of a cul-

tural taxonomy emerged. In the illustrations of his

1865 book The Grammar of Ornament, Jones does

for ornamental style what Buffon did for botanic

species. But there is a disparity between the illus-

trations and the text of Joness book. Jones cautions

his reader: The principles discoverable in the works

of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is

taking the ends for the means.18 Even though the

text explicitly argues against the use of his plates

as a visual lexicon, the representational conventions

he employs for the visual display of historical orna-

mentgridded pages of isolated samplesfirmly

entrenches the publication in an extensive tradition

of pattern books (Fig. 3). However, the final plates

in the collection deviate from the rigid taxonomic

survey of ornament from the past. Under therubric of Leaves and Flowers from Nature, Jones

includes ornament of his own design (Fig. 4). To

the casual observer, these plates more closely

approximate botanical illustrations than ornamental

samples. Rendered as line drawings in a style popu-

larised by the eighteenth century naturalist Carl

Linnaeus, Joness ornament consists of numbered

specimens depicted in exacting detail in full-page

layouts, emancipating them from the represen-

tational conventions of the pattern book. The

realism of Joness renderings, their inherent lack ofornamental flourish, closes the gap between the dis-

parate realms of science and aesthetics. Here,style is

species. The species-style metaphor has elided to

become a tautology.

In an 1879 text entitled The Evolution of Man, the

German zoologist Ernst Haeckel advances what

would later be referred to as the recapitulation

theory.19 The theory, which holds that the embryo-

nic development of an organism encapsulates the

evolutionary descent of the species, is both an

attempt to historicise biology and to theorise

development. In his 1899 book Kunstformen der

Natur, Haeckel includes a plate that gives aesthetic

expression to his scientific theory.20 Plate 95

(Fig. 5) illustrates the recapitulation theory by seam-

lessly juxtaposing embryonic forms of contemporary

echinoderms with fossilised echinoderms of the

Palaeozoic era. In a single image, Haeckel conflates

the development of a single organism within the

species with the evolution of the entire species.

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Figure 3. Plate VII fro

Owen Joness The

Grammar of Ornamen

depicting Egyptian

ornament in a typical

taxonomic format;

from: The Grammar o

Ornament (New York,

Dover Publications, Inc

1987). Photograph

credit:# The Gramm

of Ornament/Owen

Jones/Dover

Publications, Inc.


8/16

The plates from this book attest to the proximity of

the scientific and the aesthetic at the close of the

nineteenth century: both de-contextualise their

objects of study; both emphasise form; and both

are interested in questions concerning the gene-

ration and development of form. In fact, for

Haeckel the scientific and aesthetic are virtually

interchangeable as evidenced by his use of an

image of a jellyfish with the scientific name

Toreuma as both Plate 28 in his book, and as an

ornamental ceiling motif in his home, the Villa

Medusa, in Jena. Similarly, Rene Binet appropriated

Haeckels radiolarian with his monumental entrance

gate for the Paris World Exposition of 1900. These

examples fall under the rubric of specious styles.

The species-style metaphor is once again rendered

a tautology; for Haeckel and Binet, species is style.21

A closer reading of one body of work, that of the

Belgian art nouveau architect Victor Horta, will

expose many nuanced manifestations within the

spectrum of possibilities that stretches between sty-

lised species and specious styles in this period. While

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specious styles

Amy Kulper

Figure 4. Plate XCVII

from Owen Joness The

Grammar of Ornament

depicting Joness own

ornamental designs

under the title Leaves

and Flowers from

Nature; from: The

Grammar of Ornament

(New York, Dover

Publications, Inc.,

1987). Photograph

credit:# The Grammar

of Ornament/Owen

Jones/Dover

Publications, Inc.

Figure 5. Plate 95 fromErnst Haeckels

Kunstformen der Natur

illustrating Haeckels

recapitulation theory;

from: Art Forms in

Nature (New York,

Dover Publications, Inc.,

1974). Photograph

credit:# Art Forms in

Nature/Ernst Haeckel/

Dover Publications, Inc.


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it is clearly Hortas intention to produce work that

would be classified as stylised species, work that

engages the metaphorical tension between the aes-

thetic and scientific realms, he occasionally falls prey

to the seduction of specious styles.

The hegemony and inevitability of style in Hortas

work is one intriguing manifestation of the species-

style metaphor. Winckelmanns aesthetic interpret-

ation of the coherence between species and speci-

men suggests that the species-style metaphor

theorises the part-to-whole relationship in architec-

tural discourse in a way that assures, not only the

dominance of stylistic concerns, but also the very

inevitability of style itself. In Hortas work, the coher-

ence between the detail and the spatial situation is

informed by the tenets of Gesamtkunstwerk. In a

hybrid element from the Maison and Atelier Horta(1898 1901), the connectivity of column, light

fixture, handrail, armrest, seat back, heating grate

is purely a result of style, which transcends material

and functional differences, yielding a cohesive whole

(Fig. 6). While the parts are easily identified and

classified, the whole defies such categorisation; it

is more than the sum of its parts. The certitude

that every living thing belongs to a species mandates

that all forms of architectural production exhibit sty-

listic coherence. As a result of the species-style

metaphor, scientific certitude becomes aestheticmandate.

Another indication of the species-style metaphor

in Hortas work resides in his deployment of style

as language. Hortas position can be located some-

where between Goethes assertion of style as a

language that reveals the nature of things, and

Owen Joness taxonomy of ornament, which

renders style a de-situated language that can be uni-

versally deployed according to certain grammatical

principles. This sort of Jonesian classificatory think-

ing in Hortas work is evidenced by a drawing in

his sketchbook depicting the taxonomy of door iron-

mongery used in his various houses, or by the repeti-

tious and almost indiscriminate use of similar

ornamental motifs, such as columns with burgeon-

ing capitals, in vastly different circumstances in his

body of work.

In natural history, at times species are represented

as taxonomies, in which de-contextualised speci-

mens are arranged according to the imposition of

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Figure 6. Hybrid

element from Victor

Hortas Maison and

Atelier (1898 1901);

from: Victor Horta,

David Dernie (London

Academy Group Ltd,

1995). Photograph

credit: Alastair Carew-

Cox# 2006 Horta/

SOFAM Belgium.


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rational order, and at times species are represented

in their natural habitats, like the museum diorama,

in which they are situated within their natural

environments. Similarly, styles appear in bothde-contextualised taxonomies and situated environ-

ments. Hortas projects run the gamut between

these two extremes. If we look at his use of orna-

ment in the Hotel Tassel (189397), we discover

that Horta makes a conscientious effort to deploy

natural ornamental motifs that are appropriate to

their contexts. For example, in the winter garden,

the space for the collection of exotic plant species

and curiosities, Horta uses a repetitious ornamental

motif resembling wallpaper (Fig. 7). Here, the taxo-

nomic referential structure of the spacea spacefor collection and displaywarrants a repetitive,

de-contextualised ornamental motif. In another

site-specific mural, this one occupying a curved

soffit connecting the mezzanine balcony to the

salon below, the balustrade rotates to accommodate

magic lantern projections, and thus the space is,

programmatically, a space for illusions (Fig. 8).

Hortas mural also engages in the production of

illusion. Rendered in the same colour as the iron-

work of the ground floor structural system, this

mural propagates the illusion of a seamless tran-

sition from three-dimensional structure to two-

dimensional decoration. In terms of the overall

grammar of ornament, Horta allows the ornament

of the mural to become frame, imitating and com-

pleting the logic of the structural system below,

while programmatically anticipating the frame,

both implied and actual, of the magic lantern

projection. Located on the literal threshold

between photographic and architectural illusion,

and between ornament and structure, this mural

speaks not only to the stark juxtaposition of the

two enterprises, but suggests a potentially seamless

continuity between the beautiful and the useful.

Finally, the mural occupying the main stairwell

deserves consideration (Fig. 9). Responding to the

programmatic specificity of a stairwell, a place of

movement and ascension, and the locus of the

mobilised viewer, the generative inner nature of

this mural resists pictorial capture. The mural reflects

the thematic topography of the house, which

moves from the dark, compressed and cavernous

space of the entrance vestibule to the light,

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Amy Kulper

Figure 7. Winter

Garden Mural of Victor

Hortas Hotel Tassel

(189397); from: Victor

Horta, David Dernie

(London, Academy

Group Ltd, 1995).

Photograph credit:

Alastair Carew-Cox#

2006 Horta/

SOFAM Belgium.


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extended and ethereal space of the first floor

landing. This metaphorical movement from earth

to sky and from darkness to light is depicted in

the murals transitions of coloration, density, and

materiality, as the tendrils that extend to the

upper landing seem almost to dissolve or demateria-

lise in the intense light. Thus, we can see that at

times Horta adapts an ornamental motif to the

function or programme of its specific situation

within the house, while at others, he capitulates

to the de-contextualising influence of scientific tax-

onomy; the former is an instance of stylised species,

the latter, an example of specious style.

Horta is equally influenced by the species-style

metaphor in his propensity for style to engage incre-

ments of natural development and biological life-

span. If Winckelmann was the first to projectbiological lifespan onto style, while Goethe

equated style with the accurate representation of

development, and Semper claimed that style was

the accord of an object with its genesis, while

Haeckel utilised the recapitulation theory as an

occasion to aestheticise development, then it may

not be surprising that natural development and bio-

logical lifespan feature prominently in Hortas work.

But what are their respective roles? In the species-

style analogy, taxonomic schematisations of species

find their corollary in historicist representations ofstyle, and this is precisely what Horta and his

fellow art nouveau architects sought to avoid. In

choosing nature as their source of inspiration, and

representing the natural as it develops and

emerges, art nouveau practitioners hoped to

eschew the prevalent problems of their dayspecifi-

cally, stylistic relativism and historical eclecticism.

One example of Hortas work that closely resembles

Haeckels illustration of his recapitulation theory is

the column detail from the facade of the Hotel

Tassel. Just as Haeckel brazenly juxtaposes Palaeo-

zoic and contemporary specimens, Horta overtly

positions classical stone columns next to a decidedly

modern curved and riveted iron lintel. Recalling

Goethes characterisation of the poetic moment in

which what is useful in one period becomes rep-

resentational in the next, this combination of

modern lintel and ancient column seems to illustrate

a kind of abridged evolution, akin to Gaston

Bachelards definition of the ornamental category

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The Journal

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Figure 8. Mural viewe

from the mezzanine

balcony of Victor

Hortas Hotel Tassel

(189397); from: Vict

Horta, David Dernie

(London, Academy

Group Ltd, 1995).

Photograph credit:

Alastair Carew-Cox#

2006 Horta/

SOFAM Belgium.


12/16

of the grotesque.22 What makes this example an

instance of specious style in Hortas work is that,

like Haeckel, he is concerned primarily with the

appearance of development at the expense of the

behaviour of development.

When style engages issues of natural develop-

ment in nineteenth-century architectural discourse,

the question that is raised is development towards

what? Sempers adaptation of Cuviers functional

classification brought function, programme and

typology to the forefront of architectural interest,

and with this came a teleological inclinationa

tacit assumption that development is always

development towards an end. The teleological

imperative of style in Hortas work manifests itself

in the typological consistency of his projects. His

houses, designed for different clients, on differentsites, under different circumstances are possessed

of certain typological consistencies that potentially

render them specious styles. Hortas repetitive use

of a vertical topography that presents a movement

from darkness to light with a staircase as a central

iconic figure suggests that the answer to the ques-

tiondevelopment to what end?is a foregone

conclusion. The emergent nature in his domestic

projects repeatedly develops towards an immanent

representation of cosmological transcendence.23

This typological consistency is associated with theteleological imperative of style in Hortas work. Its

tendency towards universality, its indifference to

the specific situations of the individual houses,

makes this a specious aspect of Hortas art

nouveau style.

Finally, the species-style metaphor manifests itself

in Hortas work by way of a vital impulse. Blossfeldts

magnified images of plant specimens call attention

to the migration of vitalism from biological to aes-

thetic discourse. In opposition to mechanistic theo-

ries of development, the vitalists posit an essential

and vital force as the catalyst to all biological trans-

formations. Walter Benjamin likens this to the aes-

thetic Stilformen, or original stylistic forms in which

the vital impulse is located. This vital impulse

informs Hortas style, specifically his tendency con-

sistently to represent burgeoning or emergent

nature. In his lectures and writing, Horta stresses

the importance of becoming a student of nature

so that one can represent its every nuance and

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specious styles

Amy Kulper

Figure 9. Main stairway

mural of Victor Hortas

Hotel Tassel (189397);

from: Victor Horta,

David Dernie (London,

Academy Group Ltd,

1995). Photograph

credit: Alastair Carew-

Cox# 2006 Horta/

SOFAM Belgium.


13/16

stage of development, and although his sketches

prove him to be a man of his word, his architecture

focuses exclusively on emergent natural motifs.24

Hortas ornamental style captures nature at themoment of its genesis, the instant when it is ani-

mated by a vital force. To the degree that this rep-

resents Hortas desire to capture the behaviour of

nature, it is an example of stylised species; to the

extent that it visually codifies the appearance and

behaviour of nature, it is an instance of specious

style.

The species-style metaphor is responsible for

keeping certain parallel questions in the aesthetic

and scientific realms alive; such as, whether style is

based upon external appearance or internal beha-viour, and whether the identity of a species resides

in its diverse forms or in its various functions. What

is evident from this examination is that the concep-

tual analogy, and ultimately, the conflation of

species and style, engenders a persistent dialectic

in modern architectural discourse that made func-

tion and typology preoccupations of the early twen-

tieth century, and performativity and morphology

concerns of the early twenty-first century. As the

species-style metaphor became increasingly

common in the discipline of architecture, however,

the creative tension at the core of the analogous

relationship between the scientific and aesthetic

realms was supplanted by mere affinity: disparate

interpretations became synonymous, and the

species-style metaphor elided to become a tautol-

ogy. This brings us full circle to the contemporary

status of species and style within our discipline. In

this moment of blobs and biomorphic forms, para-

metric modeling and rapid prototyping, stereolitho-

graphy and selective laser sintering, it is apparent

that species is no longer like style; species is style.

We are awash in buzzwords like forces, dynamics,

performance, emergence, efficiency, and adap-tation, but as provocative as these terms are, they

seem inseparable from the biomorphic aesthetic

upon whose coattails they first entered the

discipline.

The guidebook to the Crystal Palace described the

works of man . . . leading to a variety of so-called

styles as they corresponded to the varied species

of Divinely created life. In the context of the nine-

teenth century, the species-style metaphor focused

upon what nature and culture produce. When con-

sidering the question of species and style in our con-temporary context, interest has shifted from what

nature and culture produce, to the how of

natural and cultural production. The unrealised

promise of Goethes morphology is that it presciently

reflects this shift in interest from the appearance of

the natural to its behaviour. What can contemporary

architectural discourse learn from Goethes

morphology?

One of Goethes fundamental claims about mor-

phology is that its intention is to portray rather

than explain.25 Morphology did not develop as a

particular science, but as a kind of meta-science in

which representations of development were privi-

leged over explanations of development. Goethe

recognised that species and styles are epistemologi-

cally different, but the meta-category of mor-

phology allowed him to seize upon their

representational similarities. Thus, the discursive,

the logical and the explanatory had no role in his

discussion of style. From Goethe, architectural

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discourse must learn that when it embraces the mor-

phological, it is not required to capitulate to the logic

and intelligibility of scientific thought. Goethe also

believed that morphology should eschew teleology.Instinctively he knew that the question of develop-

ment toward what end? was too easily and thought-

lessly answered by the production of an image. In

eschewing teleology, Goethes morphology avoids

portraying mere appearances or images of species,

and as we have seen in numerous examples, this is

one area in which the species-style metaphor consist-

ently lapses into tautology. From Goethe, architec-

tural discourse must learn that a genuine interest in

morphology engages the representation of change,

and that this representational interest is completelydetached from any biomorphic aesthetic. Finally,

Goethe argues that morphology legitimises itself by

establishing a new vantage point from which form

may be considered: the vantage point of change,

transformation, and development. In this sense, he

is orienting morphology towards the behaviour of

species. From Goethe, architectural discourse must

learn that establishing a new vantage point about

the change, transformation, and development of

form does not mean that interests in flows, forces,

dynamics, adaptation, performance and emergence

should supplant other considerations of spatial

experience; nor does it mean that formal interests

should eclipse all other interests.

This essay began with some speculations about

the impact of the species-style metaphor on

current architectural practices. It will conclude with

a question. How can we as a discipline restore the

metaphorical tension to the species-style analogy;

or, how do we avoid the propagation of specious

styles? In order to address the profusion and ubi-

quity of biomorphic forms, we must shift our

emphasis from the appearance of species to the

behaviour of species. When employing rapid proto-typing technologies, we must be cognisant of the

distinction between formal iterations and formal

development. Currently, prototypes are generated

through a quasi-scientific process aimed at expand-

ing formal options while excluding authorial intent.

Paradoxically, at the conclusion of this process, the

architect must choose one model, allowing aesthetic

preference to muddy the scientific waters. Framing

the prototypes as developments rather than iter-

ations potentially lends the process an evaluative

structure that is not purely subjective. Parametricdesign can reinstate the metaphorical tension to

the species-style comparison by expanding the

field of parameters beyond the information and

recombinant geometries of species, to the constitu-

ents of spatial experience that have traditionally

belonged to style. And finally, the conflation of

design and fabrication through automated manu-

facturing is a practice that appears directly to

emulate natures generative capacity, which draws

no such distinction between design and production;

but rather than guaranteeing natural qualities of

emergence, it ensures the cultural commodification

of architecture. Can we observe the possibilities of

architectural form from a new vantage point or are

we resigned to the propagation of specious styles?

Notes and references1. Great Exhibition Catalogue of 1851, 4 vols, Guide to

the Crystal Palace and Park, volume iv (London,

Crystal Palace Library, 1854), p.104.

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2. In what M.H. Abrams provocatively describes as a

German theory of vegetable genius, Friedrich

Schelling, in his System of Transcendental Idealism of

1800, suggests that productive activity includes not

only what is generally called art . . . that which is

practised with consciousness, deliberation, and reflec-

tion, and can be taught and learned, but also that

which cannot be achieved by application or in any

other way, but must be inherited as a free gift from

nature. See M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp:

Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 1971), p.209.

3. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of the Art of

Antiquity, eds, Julia Bloomfield et al ., trs., Harry

F. Mallgrave, Texts and Documents (Los Angeles, The

Getty Research Institute, 2006), p. 71.

4. Carlo Ginzburg, Style as Inclusion, Style as Exclusion, in

Picturing Science, Producing Art, eds, Caroline A. Jones,

Peter Galison (New York, Routledge, 1998), p. 34.

5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simple Imitation of

Nature, Manner, Style, in Goethe on Art, ed., John

Gage (London, Scolar Press, 1980), p.23.

6. Caroline van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century

Architecture: An Inquiry into Its Theoretical and Philo-

sophical Background (Amsterdam, Architectura &

Natura Press, 1994), p.100.

7. The theory of the poetic moment appears in an essay

by Goethe entitled Palladio Architecture written in

1795 and published posthumously. Goethes theoryensures the continuity of the qualities and appearance

of architecture, while claiming for architecture an

autonomous aesthetic sensibility. See William

Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems

of Form, Function, and Transformation (New York,

John Wiley & Son, Inc., 1971), p.161. Coleman refers

to the confusion of causation and temporal succession

as the great intellectual prejudice of nineteenth-

century thought.

8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe: Scientific

Studies, ed., Douglas Miller, trs., Douglas Miller, 12

vols., vol. 12, Goethe (New York, Suhrkamp Publishers,

1988), p.54. From the essay Toward a General Com-

parative Theory written between 1790 and 1794,

and published in 1892: it addresses the problem of

physicotheology.

9. Ibid., p.59. Goethe advances this argument in the essay

Observation on Morphology in General, written in

1795 and published in 1891.

10. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the

Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, Texas Christian

University Press, 1976), p. 50.

11. Ibid., p. 51.

12. Ibid., p. 52.

13. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, ed., G.P. Gould, trs.,

H. Rackham, II vols, The Loeb Classical Library, Book III

(Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1942), pp.7, 25.

Crassus, the protagonist of Ciceros De Oratore

(55 BC), offers an early formulation of rhetorical style

when he contends that in nature there are a multi-

plicity of things that are different from one another

and yet esteemed as having a similar nature. It is

from this context that the definition of style as the

internal coherence of nature is derived.

14. See Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided

Representation: The Question of Creativity in the

Shadow of Production (Cambridge, The MIT Press,

2004), pp. 358366.15. van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architec-

ture: An Inquiry into Its Theoretical and Philosophical

Background, op.cit., p. 228.

16. Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic

Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics: A Handbook for Tech-

nicians, Artists, and Friends of the Arts, eds, Julia

Bloomfield et al., trs, Harry F. Mallgrave and Michael

Robinson, Texts & Documents (Los Angeles, Getty Pub-

lications, 2004), pp. 5253.

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17. Walter Benjamin, New Things About PlantsA

Review of Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der Kunst, in,

Germany: The New Photography 1927 1933, ed.,

David Mellor (London, Lund Humphries, 1978), p. 21.

18. Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament(London, Day

and Son, Limited, 1865), p.8.

19. Ernst Haeckel,TheEvolution of Man:A Popular Exposition

of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylo-

geny, 2 vols(New York,D. AppletonandCompany, 1879).

20. Richard Hartmann, ed., Art Forms in Nature: The

Prints of Ernst Haeckel (Munich, Prestel-Verlag, 1998).

21. See Robert Proctors paper, Architecture from the cell-

soul: Rene Binet and Ernst Haeckel, in this issue for a

more thorough discussion of Binets appropriation of

Haeckels theories.

22. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trs., Maria

Jolas (New York, The Orion Press, 1964), pp. 108

09. Bachelard writes: And so, unbridled, bestial day-

dream produces a diagram for a shortened version of

animal evolution. In other words, in order to achieve

grotesqueness, it suffices to abridge evolution.

23. This version of immanentism corresponds to one of its

most radical manifestations in Husserls writing, where

it is posited as transcendence in immanence.

24. In an unpublished manuscript entitled Cours danato-

mie of 1921, Horta describes in great detail the need

to study nature in all of its nuanced manifestations:

Since then I have studied the life, the sleep, and the

death of plants, animals, and people, with keen inter-

est. How much my vision has broadened I could not

say. From leaves newly unfurled, and growing into

maturity, to those encountered in full bloom, scorched

by the ardour of the sun in high August, to the same

leaves dead of old age in October; from the leaves of

dawn to those of noon, of sunset, and of night. I

have studied all of their countenances with an interest

which, unfortunately, my schedule is chary of letting

me fulfill. See Yolande Oostens-Wittamer, Victor

Horta: Lhotel Solvay(Louvain-La-Neuve, Institut Super-

ieur DArcheologie et DHistoire de LArt, 1980), pp.

24950.

25. Goethe, Goethe: Scientific Studies, op. cit., p. 57.

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