Structuralism

A structuralist method focuses on examining how different parts of a whole are arranged in relation to one another. What laws, rules, or principles bind the elements together?

Ferdinand Saussure

Structuralist theory originated in linguistics, where it was developed by Ferdinand Saussure (1857–1915). Saussure pointed out that language should be seen as a system of signs. A single sign has no meaning in itself but can only be understood in relation to other signs within the system.

From linguistics, structuralism spread to other fields such as literature, ethnography, and psychology, becoming a method of analysis for uncovering the underlying structures behind varying forms of expression.

Structuralism also had a major influence on architecture. Especially in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a search for fundamental structures in architecture along with a push for greater openness and flexibility in building design. Architecture, like language, was expected to accommodate changing functions and expressions while maintaining an underlying structure.

The structuralists’ goal was to identify an overarching structure in both housing and the city that could be combined with individual components, allowing for greater formal and functional variety. Architecture needed to be more open than what had been seen in industrial construction. It had to account for the needs of individual residents and unite the general with the changeable and specific. Many architects studied building traditions in countries where industrial construction had not yet replaced local traditions.

In North Africa and the Mediterranean, they observed building practices based on fixed structures but allowing great variation within them. This richness of variation was something they wanted to bring into Western architecture, which in the 1950s and 1960s was dominated by an international, anonymous style based on standard dimensions.

By studying housing in other cultures, architects could better identify traits that were shared and therefore fundamentally universal across history.

Aldo van Eyck

One of the leading figures of structuralism was the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (1918–1999). Among his most famous works is a children’s home in Amsterdam (1955–1960), which became an icon of structuralism. The building is based on square modular extensions and cast in concrete. Its appearance strongly recalls traditional Islamic architecture with its many flat domes.

In describing the building, van Eyck emphasized the need to unite the old with the new and rediscover the archaic principles of human nature:

Modern architecture has threshed the straw of novelty so thoroughly that it has lost contact with what is not new – with what is fundamentally the same.

Van Eyck made this statement at the international architecture congress CIAM ’59. The focus there was on the underlying patterns of society and, in particular, the city. The aim was to create urban planning that combined systematic order with openness.

Among the participants was the architecture group Candilis-Josic-Woods, known for their vision of the city as a network. Like van Eyck, they argued that architecture should mediate between old and new, modernity and tradition, identity and anonymity. Urban planning, they believed, should not follow abstract shapes and ideas but be grounded in human needs and activities.

The American architect Shadrach Woods described the group’s ideas as follows:

We tried to discover how human activities were interconnected and how they could be used to organize our homes, streets, and places. Organize was used in the sense of becoming organic. And since there is no life without change, we tried to make change – or at least the possibility of change – one of the key conditions of design. The obvious solution was, of course, linear organization. A line is open at the ends, it has no dimension, and it can freely change direction. (World Architecture One, 1964, p. 153).

Candilis-Josic-Woods

One of their most famous projects was the design of a new district outside Toulouse, Toulouse-le-Mirail (1962). Its underlying structure of house, street, district, and city was tied together by two circulation systems: a pedestrian network and a road network. These in turn determined the pattern for the third network – housing.

This urban system could expand without altering the city’s fundamental character.