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形式、功能——自由？现代主义、远洋客轮和阶级
Form, Function - Freedom? Modernism, Ocean Liners, and Class

由专筑网邢子，小R编译

在20世纪初，现代主义建筑诞生了。它带来了一场核心的建筑运动，反过来也孕育了其分支。勒-柯布西耶（Le Corbusier）是这一运动的决定性人物，他在1923年发表的著作《走向新建筑》对他同时代的现代主义建筑产生了巨大的影响，其内容包括 "住宅是居住的机器 "，好的建筑必须与功能和需求有内在的联系。

在寻找功能与形式和谐相处的设计先例时，对现代主义建筑师群体来说，交通成为灵感的重要来源。勒-柯布西耶等人对汽车非常痴迷，他认为汽车是现代性的一个无可争议的象征。然而，另一种交通形式的影响可以说更大，远洋客轮——长途客运船成为所谓"新时代建筑 "模范设计的标志。

这容易理解，20世纪初的远洋客轮是工程上的杰作，这些大型船只肩负着复杂的任务，要将漫长的航海旅程与乘客的舒适体验相结合。乘坐这些远洋客轮的费用越高，其设计就越复杂。这引起了建筑师的兴趣，他们试图将其流线型的外形、管道栏杆和别致的内部装饰转化为陆地上的建筑案例。

The early 20th century saw the birth of Modernist architecture. It brought with it a central architectural movement that in turn birthed off-shoots of its own. A figure often seen as the defining face of this movement is Le Corbusier, whose 1923 treatise Toward an Architecture was influential to his Modernist contemporaries – a manifesto including the phrase “a house is a machine for living in” where good architecture would have to be intrinsically linked to function and the demands of industry.
In searching for design precedents where function and form have a harmonious relationship, transportation became, for Modernist groups of architects, a key source of inspiration. Cars for the likes of Le Corbusier became an obsession, with him seeing the automobile as an indisputable symbol of modernity. Another form of transportation, however, had an arguably even bigger impact. The ocean liner – long-haul passenger ships – becoming icons of exemplary design for a so-called “architecture of the new age”
It is easy to see why. Ocean liners at the turn of the 20th century were feats of engineering, large vessels that had the complicated task of combining long seafaring journeys with a comfortable experience for their passengers. The more expensive trips were on these passenger ocean liners, the more sophisticated their designs got, piquing the interest of architects who sought to translate their streamlined shapes, pipe railings and chic interiors to architectural developments on land.


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当我们剖析笼罩这些建筑上的社会背景时，这些在某些现代主义建筑中采用的"海轮美学"就变得更加有趣。这是一个复杂的讨论，因为远洋客轮，以其奢侈的室内设计和与富人旅行的联系，作为一个容器，进一步象征了建筑是"精英"的。勒-柯布西耶的巴黎萨沃伊别墅的一楼沙龙被刻意设计为模仿远洋客轮甲板的感觉和外观。围绕弯曲楼梯的白色管状栏杆进一步增加了这种效果。萨沃伊别墅与勒-柯布西耶的许多早期作品类似，是为一个富人客户设计的项目。

This adoption of the ‘ocean liner aesthetic’ in certain Modernist structures is made even more interesting when one dissects the societal backdrop that enveloped these buildings. It is a complicated discussion, because the ocean liner, with its extravagant interior design and association with the journeys of the rich, being able to serve as a vessel for further symbolising a building as that of the ‘elite’. The first-floor salon of Le Corbusier’s formative Parisian Villa Savoye was deliberately designed to mimic the feel and appearance of the upper deck of an ocean liner. The white tubular railing that wraps around the curved staircase further adds to this effect. Villa Savoye, similar to many of Le Corbusier’s early works, was a project for a wealthy client.


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Image © Flickr User Steve Silverman under the (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.

作为富裕的象征，远洋客轮被勒-柯布西耶提炼为简约的空间和去除华丽的内饰，但最终成为了新"机器时代"的财富象征。

另一位与法国有关的建筑师——让-普鲁维（Jean Prouvé）也从船舶的航海语言中找到了自己的现代主义风格。他在20世纪50年代设计的预制“热带之家”是由折叠的钢板和铝制成的原型结构。远洋客轮的灵感在设计中的存在感很低，只在外墙的圆形穿孔中显示出来——这是对船舶舷窗的参考。虽然设计的性质意味着它实际上是一个临时结构，但它仍然是一个豪华的象征，因为这些房子是为驻扎在法国西非殖民地的法国官员设计的，这是现代主义思想的局限性的一个恰当的代表。

The ocean liner as a symbol of opulence was distilled by Le Corbusier into un-cluttered spaces and the removal of gaudy interiors, but ultimately still functioned as a symbol of wealth in a new “machine age”
Another architect connected to France – Jean Prouvé – also looked to the nautical language of ships to develop his own strain of Modernism. His 1950s prefabricated Maisons Tropicales were prototype structures made from folded sheet steel and aluminium. The ocean liner inspiration had a muted presence in the design, only showing itself in circular perforations of the exterior wall – a reference to a ship’s portholes. Although the nature of the design meant that it was, in effect, a makeshift structure, it would still function as a symbol of luxury, as the houses were designed for French officials stationed in France’s West African colonies. It’s an apt representation of the limitations of some Modernist lines of thought.


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一个新的机械化时代，表面上被标榜为减少社会弊端和培养更平等的社会的工具，结果让-普鲁维重新包装了一个与财富相关的标志——远洋客轮的舷窗，不是为一个激进的客户，而是为法国殖民当局的现状。古老的远洋客轮有一个分层系统，在设计和分配给富裕乘客与底层阶级的空间中，阶层之间的区别是显而易见的。普鲁维的"热带之家"虽然努力将非洲本土特色与现代建筑方法相协调，但仍然可以感觉到它是为欧洲人建造的房子，这与法国西非殖民地的非洲人建造的本土建筑有明显区别。

A new age of mechanisation, ostensibly billed as a tool for reducing social ills and cultivating a more equal society, resulted in Jean Prouvé simply repackaging an emblem associated with wealth – the ocean liner porthole – not for a radical client, but instead for the existing status quo of French colonial authorities. The ocean liners of old had a tiered system, where the distinctions between classes were immediately apparent in the design and space allocated for wealthy passengers versus the less-expensive classes. Prouvé’s Maisons Tropicales, while striving to harmonise African indigeneity with modern construction methods, were still perceptibly structures that sought to themselves as homes for Europeans – distinguishing themselves from the vernacular architecture built by Africans in France’s West African colonies.


Image © Archer Humphryes Architects

也确实存在一个例子，它试图并成功地将远洋客轮的现代主义魅力转化为一种寻求民主化的结构。这是位于英格兰南海岸的德拉瓦尔馆，从风格上看，显然是对远洋客轮的伟大时代的致敬，该馆由逃离希特勒德国的恩里克-门德尔松和俄罗斯建筑师塞尔吉-切尔马耶夫设计。

There does exist an example that has sought, and has succeeded, to turn the Modernist appeal of the ocean liner into a structure that seeks to democratise. The De La Warr Pavilion in the South Coast of England is, stylistically, a clear homage to the grand age of ocean liners, designed by Enrich Mendelsohn, who had fled Hitlers Germany, and Russian architect Serge Chermayeff.


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钢和混凝土构成了展馆的骨架，大玻璃窗和悬臂式阳台源自于大型海船的外观。然而，从一开始，这座建筑就没有被设想为一个精英俱乐部，而是作为"人民的宫殿"。市长——一位社会主义思想的倡导者宣传说，该建筑将作为一个民主的社会部门，一个便于广大公众使用的文化中心。它能够作为一个娱乐场所蓬勃发展，为伦敦的南岸中心奠定了基础。

当现代主义建筑师试图摆脱古代建筑的束缚时，海轮是进步、现代性和技术力量的合理诠释。而在这个诠释下，一些建筑师只是把远洋客轮作为一个纯粹的风格符号，延续了远洋客轮作为富裕标志的做法。然而，对于一些现代主义建筑来说，远洋客轮只是一种表面意义上的风格选择，在这种情况下，远洋客轮复杂的等级制度被取消了，取而代之的是一种更平等、更容易被接受的建筑形式。

Steel and concrete made up the skeleton of the pavilion, with large glass windows and cantilevered balconies derived from the appearance of large sea vessels. From its inception, however, the building was not envisioned as an elite club, but instead as a ‘People’s Palace’. The Mayor – a proponent of socialist thinking – propagated that the building would act as a democratic social enterprise, a cultural centre easily accessible for the wider public. It was able to thrive as a premier entertainment venue, laying the groundwork for the Southbank Centre in London.
As Modernist architects sought to escape the boundaries of the architecture of antiquity, the ocean liner was a sensible illustration of progress, modernity, and the power of technology. With this illustration, some architects simply used the ocean liner as a purely stylistic symbol, a continuation of the ocean liner as a marker of affluence. For some Modernist buildings, however, the ocean liner was a stylistic choice in only a superficial sense – where the complicated hierarchies of the passenger ocean liner were done away in favour of a more egalitarian, accessible structure.


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