Notes on Botticher

The Bötticher text:
Karl Gottliebe Wilhelm Bötticher, "The Principles of the Hellenic and Germanic Ways of Building," in Wolfgang Hermann ed., In What Style should we Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style, Santa Monica, 1992;147-161. (Reader)
(Commemorative address on the occasion of Schinkel's birthday (d. 1841), pub'd originally in Allgemeine Bauzeitung 11, 1848)
Summary Remarks: Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions. "Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . . the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture." (154) When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not visible. And finally, like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code: the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.

1. What is the origin of form according to Bötticher?
(This should rather be stated as, What is the basis of form?)

Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions.

The essence of any particular style is indicated by the system according to which the covering of space is articulated into parts or structural unit. . . Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . .

Moreover, there is a kind of invisible pneuma or life deep in this structure:

the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture. (154)

Note his diatribe against eclecticism on 151 and 152 where he condemns the use of a Classical style to clothe Germanic building, “to give the arcuated system a kind of aesthetic education . . . to use it like a model to be dressed at will. This was a most wretched and foolhardy idea. . . One may ask how the retention of an old style in a new dress could ever turn it into a new one that would embody the essence of both.” This surface problem, or rather the problem of the ontology of the surface, thus finds its first articulation here. Lashing out against the petty attempts to clothe Germanic buildings in the Renaissance with Classical motifs, “which counseled compromise as the source of a new style, also remained tied to the surface of things.” (153)


2. What is the role of “structural force” in his argument against mimesis?
(Or rather, why is structure not a mimetic concept?)

Bötticher, therefore, opposes to surface the notion of “system”: “No one realized that the origin of all specific styles rests on the effect of a new structural principle derived from he material and that this alone makes the formation of a new system of covering space possible and thereby brings forth a new world of art-forms.” (153)

Structural force is a latent condition and leads to certain formal organizations called style (“the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say the law of atomic order”).

All opinions for or against a particular style have referred only to the outer shell, that is, to the scheme of the buildings’ art-forms, which were considered to be identical with the principle of a style. The true essentials have never been seriously considered; the discussion has never actually turned to the source of the art-forms and of the diversity of styles, namely, the structural principle and material conditions on which each is based. (150)

Structure, as a principle, is not determined by concept of how it ought to appear. How building appear, is a consequence of structural principles.


3. How is style related to material?

Style is certainly related to the concept of force. And this becomes a central concern: “Is it possible for yet another new style to be developed . . . one specific to our generation, in which a strugural force different from that of the other two sytles acs as the principle of its system of covering? And what force would be its active principle?”(157)

When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not clear, visible.

Architecture unlike painting or sculpture does not proceed by imitation.

Architecture must first be victorious in its struggle with the material and, without a model as a guide, must establish a spatial system, before it can enlist sculpture and painting to embellish it with art-forms, these two arts proceed straightaway to the representation of ideas by using familiar analogies taken from the outside world. (155).

In this way, nature has contrived to force the following generation to become more independent and to seek in the still visible traces of the past for its true essence, not by groping around blindly but by consciously identifying and subordinating to its own style all that remains hidden. (155)

In a perceptive fashion, Bötticher has made a fundamentally new claim: design must proceed by the analysis of material: “Every creative generation that has given borth to a new style has had to start from the beginning with this process of mastering the material.” And this is squarely opposed to Q-de-Q’s principle of imitation: “The need to start the process of formal creation from the beginning is an eternal law imposed on any generation destined to create a new style, a law from which it cannot escape.” And indeed, to such an extent, that he also displaces Q-de-Q’s Neo-Platonic conception of Idea: “Although this law is the first felt only as an unconscious urge, it will be clearly comprehended once it becomes a fact: that is to say, once it has passed from mere idea into reality.” (155)



Like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code of architectural development. But in Bötticher, it is more explicitly related to the formal terms of architecture’s envelope, the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.

The issue regarding the relation between the visible in the invisible shows us that in Q-d-Q’s text it is a relation organized or based on representational relations. His Encyclopedia, like all 18th Century projects was part of a table of comparisons. That table simply has no role, at any level of consideration with Hübsch and Bötticher.


If we compare the kinds of analysis that are formed by Hübsch and Bötticher with those of Blondel or Quatremère de Quincy we will immediately recognize that the analyses of the former articulate principles not quite visible in the building itself, or rather, not superimposable to what a building looks like, its "shell" as Bötticher put it. The terms of analysis are rather function, system, condition; that is to say, visible only through analysis, and which are in turn functions of other forces. All discussion of proportion, of orders, of origins (the wooden hut), the translation of wood into stone by the Greeks, etc. has been demolished. These factors, as the illustration of the face and the capital I showed today from Blondel, were all related to each other through a table of visibility and nomenclature that were the products of the Classical episteme. The following is a quote from Vidler's text which has been placed on the seminar shelf : "To talk of building type, then, implied not only its search for original validation, its ultimate restoration to the temple or hut, but also its specific aspect, the form that enabled it to be read as to its purpose at first glance: 'all the different kinds of production which belong to architecture should carry the imprint of the practical intention of each building, each should possess a character which determines the general form and which declares the building for what it is,' wrote Jacques François Blondel in 1747." Character is the transparent and visible meaning of the architecture, "to be read as to its purpose at first glance." (99) Vidler then goes on to identify the model of Botany as taken up by Blondel: "At this state, in the theories of naturalists and of architects, the idea of character was still founded on outward signs: the 'language' of animals like that of buildings was read through their 'physiognomies.'" (101). Clearly, the association to be made here is between neoclassical precepts and the Classical episteme where visibility, expression (language), were simultaneously transparent to one another in the tabular space of representations -- knowledge and the identity of things (that which organized their existence) were transparent to one another.