Ornamento e Architettura. L'estetica funzionalistica di Louis H. Sullivan

Abstract

The present volume offers an introduction to and advances a new interpretation of the aesthetic of Louis Henry Sullivan(1856-1924). Sullivan is universally known as one of the most important American architects, possibly even the greatest one of the 19th century. Scholars of the Modern Movement have misinterpreted his motto “form follows function” and have hailed him as the “father of functionalism”. Sullivan, however, attributed to the concepts of “form”, “function” and “suitability” a higher and more poetic meaning than the other architects of the Chicago School, among whom the debate on such issues, as related to Gottfried Semper’s theories and evolutionist doctrines, was quite heated. Nevertheless,rationalist criticism has approached Sullivan solely as “the prophet” of the new architecture of glass and steel, and it has privileged those drawings where mass and simplicity prevailed over ornament, ignoring that part of his theoretical and projectual work that Sullivan himself considered the most significant. Admittedly, among Sullivan's numerous essays there are only two that focus explicitly on the ornament (both of which have been included in the Appendix to the present volume): Ornament in Architecture (1892) and A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers (1924). However, in light also of the fact that the first of these essays was written at the height of his career and that he was working on the second at the end of his life, it can be argued that the ornament was a central issue that, though intertwined with functionalist and organicist concerns, permeated Sullivan’s entire work.