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Admirably perverse: tectonic expression and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz

criticism
As directly expressed construction is made difcult by technical
demands this essay compares tectonic fact and ction in an early
work by Herzog & de Meuron.

Admirably perverse: tectonic expression

and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz
Peter Blundell Jones

The Galerie Goetz is a small art gallery built between

1989 and 1992, one of the early works of Herzog &
de Meuron which helped to win them such
commissions as Tate Modern and launched their
spectacular international career. At first sight this
box-like building standing at the far end of a villa
garden in a Munich suburb seems rather dead-pan
and understated: from the street [2] you register only
the upper floor, a box measured out in five bays, for
the ground level is perfectly obscured by the garden
fence, an apparently banal element carefully remade
by the architects.
Entering the site, the ground floor is clad in milky
glass, but there is little in the way of a door or
threshold, only a few paving slabs leading to the
sliding window of the office cum reception, which is
distinguished simply by clear glass as opposed to

milky [3]. Encountering the attendant, you are

invited to take the end stair, and ascend to find
galleries, simple white boxes as cube-like and as
devoid of visible detail as possible [1]: no architraves
or skirtings, a flat ceiling with carefully placed
recessed fluorescent lights, seamless clerestory
windows in milky translucent glass, no visible frames
or mullions, and not a switch or a stray wire. Only the
floor of natural hardwood offers any colour. The
white box concept seems to have been pushed as
far as possible: three almost cubic rooms linked
by plaster-lined door-holes to the side, a calm space of
platonic purity letting the art speak for itself.
Returning down the stair, you are directed to a
second stair at the other end, more or less identical
and dropping beneath the first. Arriving at the
basement is a gallery identical to that above [4],

1 The upper space of

Galerie Goetz on
entry
2

2 From the street

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so much so that you could easily forget which level

you were on. Not only are the white walls carried
down with the same kind of surface and on precisely
the same dimensions, but the clerestory glazing also
works in the same way, enjoying the light of the
milky glass at ground floor. The lack of full
3 View on entering
the site

4 The lower gallery

space looking back

transparency is essential to prevent views of garden

and trees that would give the game away, and the
inner wall rises far enough beyond the outer glazing
to conceal shadows of things near the ground: the
basement gallery is abstracted from the world in
exactly the same way as the first floor one.
For place-making architects it might seem
desirable to let people know what level they are at in
the building and to obey Bachelards famous polarity

Peter Blundell Jones

Admirably perverse: tectonic expression and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz

criticism

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5 Plans and sections

of Galerie Goetz,
preliminary design,
basement at bottom
6 Detailed section

between cellar and attic,1 but Herzog & de Meuron

seem to have been determined to do the precise
opposite. Their texts reveal that the basement gallery
was forced on them by a height restriction, while the
plan area was limited by a need to maintain the
garden and existing trees.2 Looking at section
drawings [5, 6], it is clear that the construction had to
change radically between over- and under-ground,
the latter basically a tanked concrete box
surrounded by a drainage trench which emerges on
the surface as a bed of gravel. This piece of
groundwork is opposed to totally different
structures at ground and first floor level. At ground
level, two U-shaped concrete structures traverse the
basement box, one containing the reception cum
office, the other a store. Their U-shapes are
structural, the upturned transverse walls providing
asymmetrically placed supports for the radically
different first-floor structure: a timber frame which
performs essentially like a girder bridge. It is this
frame rather than the measureless concrete that
gives geometry, scale and rhythm to the whole
building, determining its division into five bays
longitudinally and an apparent two laterally.

Tectonic clues
If it was necessary to suppress the tectonic nature of
the architecture internally for the sake of creating
clear and neutral galleries, this policy did not apply
to the outside, where numerous clues are given
about how the building actually works. Textures and
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Peter Blundell Jones

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9a

Peter Blundell Jones

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criticism

materials are revealed in a way reminiscent of Aldo

van Eycks remark that a building can be like a
coconut, hairily protective without and pure soft
white within.3 The building has attracted most
critical attention for its use of translucent glass and
for the detaching effect this has both from within
and without,4 but this is only part of the story.
Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow also
rightly observed the floating effect of the first floor,
but declared that it appeared like heavy stone over
the lightness beneath.5 Was this purely a metaphor,
or were they deceived by black and white
photographs into thinking that the timber was in
fact board-marked concrete? Surely the whole

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concept was to contrast the very lightness and agility

of timber frame as skyworks against concrete as
groundworks, and to show the rather daring span
almost half the length being carried over the
asymmetrically placed concrete bearers [7]. This
makes sense of the way that the buildings exterior
shows no continuity of vertical members at ground
floor level; no structural rhythm carried on down,
no columns in the corners, even vertical members
poised over the centres of the large sliding opening.
Old vernacular builders knew that exposing
timber frames to the weather eventually meant
trouble with the joints and the continuity of the
infill, that it was safer to give a building a winter coat

7 The architects
model of Galerie
Goetz from their
website
8 Timber framing on a
German barn,
Niederbayerisches
Bauernhofmuseum
Massing
9 Stone House, Tavole,
Italy

9b

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Peter Blundell Jones

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10

of render,6 yet they also wanted to expose their

handiwork and the beautiful logic of the
construction [8]. Likewise Herzog & de Meuron were
taking some weathering risks with their laminated
beams and plywood-surfaced infill, and their builders
must have taken considerable trouble to get the joints
neat particularly at the corners and the shadow
gaps regular. It would surely have been easier to have
thrown the thing together roughly then rendered
everything over. Since the architects did this inside,
why not do it outside too? [10] This question
underlines the importance of the tectonic expression
that they chose to pursue, for of course to have
covered the frame would have removed much of the
buildings character and interest.
Further evidence of Herzog & de Meurons interest
in frames is given by an earlier building, the
deceptively simple Stone House at Tavole in Italy of
198588. Its main innovation was the use of
traditional dry stone walls as exterior cladding within
an in situ concrete frame [9], the concrete breaking
through the rough stone in neat horizontal and
vertical bands. The simple plan generates two large
and two small rooms with a pair of crossed concrete
walls, a structural form that stabilises the whole. It is
the ends of these partition walls that appear in the
exterior rather than the corner columns, which exist
but are absorbed. A card-carrying Brutalist would
chide the architects for hiding the columns, since
they are essential to the integrity of the frame, but
placing them on the inside of the wall helped stiffen
the inner leaf, while allowing the dry stone wall to
develop the interlocking corners needed to stabilise
it. Looking to the openings, it is an evident rule that
each door and window rises to meet the frame, so the
dry stone carries no substantial lintels,7 and there are
metal cases to frame the jambs. The impressive
Peter Blundell Jones

Admirably perverse: tectonic expression and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz

11

architectural achievement of this house lies in the

way the tectonic logic of the frame both commands
the overall planning geometry and gives expression
to the details, a combination observable again at
Galerie Goetz.
Concealing and revealing
Looking at the gallerys long facades, we see that the
five-bay structure expressed by the vertical frame
elements rises into the clerestory, and does in fact
support the roof. Yet the frames all rest on the base
member, a laminated beam whose size betrays its
major role. Its 40 cm depth stands in for the whole

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12

13

14

10 The left three bays of

the faade facing the
garden
11 Corner and end
12, 13 Preliminary and
nal versions of the
upper plan, from
Wang and El Croquis
respectively

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40 cm deep floor structure behind, and each beam

appears to be continuous along the whole of each
front. This was too long for a single tree but possible
through lamination, though it doubtless required
special manufacture and delivery. Concerning the
real nature of the joints something much
expressed in traditional carpentry [8] the facade
remains silent, and although diagonal bracing
would be desirable with this kind of structure none
was added: presumably the real stiffening comes
from the walls invisible inner leaf. We see only
plywood cladding panels placed flush with the
frame. They are defined by a very effective shadow
gap, but there is not a clue as to how they are
secured. Looking at the end of the building [11], we
see a single vertical member dividing it into two bays.
This reads satisfactorily as a repeat version of the
same vocabulary, but is in fact a sham. Floor and roof
structure must span the full width, and it would
have been more honest simply to have left the
additional column out. The trouble is that this
would have produced a bay width one and a half
times that of the long sides, instead of three
quarters. It would surely have looked wrong. How did
this problem come about?

14 Site plan, gallery

and street to right
15 Corner showing
effect of frame and
slight projection of
glazing

15

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Preliminary plan drawings [4, 12, 13] reveal that

the real rhythm of the building is not the five major
bays as finally shown but ten minor ones of half the
size, and that the width of the building was initially
set as three of these minor bays in order to make the
upper gallery rooms square. (They were almost
cubes, but if this was the intention perhaps it was
defeated by the height restriction.) Three square
galleries each with three of these small bays make
nine, add one for the staircase and the whole length
is ten, but across the plan it is three. The drawing
suggests that initially ten panels were intended along
the length of the building and three identical ones
across the ends, a good technical solution. But the
architects rightly preferred a lazier rhythm and the
more easily perceptible five bays [13].8 As a result,

16

gallery spaces fail to synchronise with structural

bays, but far from being a weakness, this provokes
interaction and variety within the building through
alternating ratios of two and three.
The building when new was admired for its
pioneering translucency. The milky glass was not
only effective for diffusing the light and obscuring
distinct vision, it also successfully concealed the
thickness of the construction, for at both levels there
are two glazing planes about 30 cm apart, the outer
one double glazed. The cavity is the site for roller
blinds needed to reduce sunlight, and is also useful
for losing services like the rainwater disposal pipes,
which would otherwise have destroyed the purity of
the exterior. Detailed sections [5] reveal also the
presence of a steel ring-beam at the head of the inner
wall, a reinforcing element demanded by the
structural engineer which is entirely concealed.
Both within and without, it seems crucial that the
glazing does not register as windows, which is
achieved by lack of obvious framing. In the galleries,
glass meets ceiling at a line, the cill joint is concealed
by the wall, and vertical seams are almost
imperceptible. On the outside the key move is the
elimination of vertical mullions, achieved by
spanning the glass top to bottom and filling vertical
junctions with sealant, including corner to corner. It
was also advantageous to manage the upper outer
glazing so that each bay is a single sheet and joints
occur only on the bay division. In section the facade
is revealed as almost flush [5], but the upper
clerestory glazing is stepped out slightly proud of the
wooden wall and the lower glazing is stepped in,
greatly affecting the visual impact [15]. The delicate
aluminium fixings at top and bottom were obviously
needed to control the weathering, hold the glass,
and allow its removal and replacement, but they also
inscribe fine horizontal lines on the facade,
sharpening the horizontal layering and unifying the
bands of glazing in contrast with the box structure.
The one place on the inside where tectonic
expression is permitted is the upper stair, where the
idea of the timber box hanging between horizontal
bands of glass is re-presented in a new way [16]. The
three horizontal framing members are restated but
made equal in size, and the redundant vertical frame

16 The upper stair

arriving at the rst
oor and the other
below. Unlike the
version in both
published plans, the
stairs are placed not
side by side but one
above the other with
a slight sideways
shift, presumably a
late design
renement
17 From A.W.N. Pugin,
True Principles,
comparative roofs:
the Gothic decorates
its truss, while the
neoclassical has a
false ceiling
suspended from
exaggerated
hangers

Peter Blundell Jones

Admirably perverse: tectonic expression and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz

17

criticism

member is also present, but the corner members are

absent, presumed swallowed in the wall. Even in
photographs we can see that all this is fine polished
joinery no mere acceptance of the raw structure
and the extra shadow gaps on what reads as the base
member deny its solidity. The visible part of the
wooden wall is also made the exact counterpart in
size and position to the rendered wall beneath. Here
the architects evidently contrived a piece of tectonic
fiction in order to represent the framed structure on
the inside in its correct rhythm and geometry,
correctly informing the visitor that he or she is
passing into the wooden layer of the building, but it
reveals none of the true structural substance.
Conclusion: the virtues of expressed construction
Modernist and Brutalist demands for the honest
expression of construction had a moral ring to them
that goes back to Pugin and his satirical drawings of
shams, the inspiration behind the Arts and Crafts
Movement [17]. There was some essential truth in
Pugins claim that ornament arises as
embellishment of necessary construction, for not
only is this evident in Gothic work but also in the
interpreted evolution of Classical architectural
vocabulary with its fake arches and keystones. It also
seems a universal principle that vernacular builders,
necessarily working within the limits of local
materials, developed working practices in response
to their materials particular qualities, minimising

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the work of conversion. Stone, wood, iron, thatch

and other materials thus each had a role, and they
were not at all interchangeable. Each working
method offered particular possibilities of
embellishment, even something as simple as the
crossed lines inscribed on a gate latch by the village
blacksmith as part of the job well done,9 but equally
the proud elaboration by a carpenter of a whole
frame and its visible joints [8]. As industrialisation
took hold, architects like Webb and Lethaby
romanticised this quality of making, often
exaggerating structural or constructional necessity
for the sake of effect [18]. It is palpably there, both
tectonic fact and good practice, but far from
statically necessary.
The machine beckoned, and in the Modernist
period architects like Le Corbusier revelled in the new
freedom and the abstraction it offered, expecting
craftsmen to mimic what the machine ought to but
could not yet do, and disguising their work with
render and paint.10 Others like Gropius and Mies
sought to express the discipline of the machine and
the logic of mass production, which were
conveniently justified in the name of efficiency and

18 Philip Webb, a small

window at Standen
with beautiful but
unnecessary
restraining arch
over a tile lintel

18

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economy giving the orthodox Modernist creed its

essential rationale.11 Mechanisation was invited to
take command12 and the development of technical
methods and technical bureaucracies led to the
victory of the purely technical solution, and as a
logical extension to the handing over of execution to
a separate bureau dtudes.13 This has allowed star
designers on prestige projects a freedom in the
bestowal of form previously unknown in history,
with an elite technical army poised to fulfil their
every whim, but it has led also in the banal everyday
world to the tyranny of unthinking technical
solutions considered only within narrow technical
limits and automatically applied. On large buildings
it appears in ubiquitous glazing systems and
autonomous suspended ceiling grids, dominating
the innocent buildings to which they are applied. In
the suburbs we see it in the crude takeover of
sensitive traditional joinery full of craft wisdom by
PVC replacement window systems with their bland
whiteness, standard sections, universal corners, faked
details and consequent excruciating proportions.
For architecture to maintain some quality of
tectonic identity, there can be no independent
technical decisions, for constructional and

Notes
1. Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of
Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
2. Wang, Wilfried, Herzog & de Meuron
(London: Artemis, 1992).
3. In The Medicine of Reciprocity, first
published in Forum c. 1960, and
included in Ligtelijn, Vincent, Aldo
van Eyck: Works (Berlin/Basel/Boston:
Birkhuser, 1999).
4. Richards, Brent, New Glass
Architecture (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006).
5. Mostafavi, Mohsen and
Leatherbarrow, David, Opacity, AA
Files no. 32.
6. In a long description of how an East
Anglian Cottage was built,
Ketteridge and Mays remark that
the weather-wise knew it was
better to cover the frame; see
Ketteridge, Chris and Mays, Spike,
Five miles from Bunkum (London: Eyre
Methuen), 1972.
7. There are on one side some very
small openings surmounted by a
flat stone which is effectively a
lintel, but this is the exception that
proves the rule.
8. According to perception theory, a
number of bays beyond seven is
hard to read specifically, and is just
seen as a lot.
9. Two lines across the end of the latch

Peter Blundell Jones

environmental issues affect how buildings are

experienced, and the way buildings are put together
tells about how they were conceived and intended.
There are always choices of technique, and they must
be considered in relation to the design as a whole.
Only the simplest structures have ever been able to
reveal their entire construction, and most buildings
involve more than one layer of fabric, making coverups inevitable. Current insulation demands and
complex servicing tend to produce many layers,
making it even more difficult to show things as they
are, but also bringing the temptation to treat
surface materials like wallpaper. The inside may also
legitimately and dramatically be treated as a
completely different world from outside, counting
on the contrast. Complete tectonic fact is therefore
very rare and tectonic fiction rife, but this does not
mean that questions of authenticity can be
altogether abandoned and that anything goes: on
the contrary, the relative truth of structural order,
surfaces, thicknesses, is still very much with us. The
stories a building tells about its own rationality and
processes of construction can still be of the greatest
interest, if pursued with the kind of sensitivity seen
at Galerie Goetz.

with a cross between, a practice

chosen for comment by George
Sturt in his famous book The
Wheelwrights Shop (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1923),
but also widespread across the
country. I found surviving
examples on Cambridgeshire farm
buildings in the 1980s.
10. I am thinking of the Weissenhof
houses and the Villa Savoye, where
materiality is rigorously
suppressed in order to enjoy the
effects of abstract composition and
pure proportion: see my
arguments in Chapter 7 of Peter
Blundell Jones, Modern Architecture
Through Case Studies (Oxford:
Architectural Press, 2002).
11. I am thinking particularly of the
Trten Estate, Dessau, an early
and bold attempt at prefabrication,
and of Gropiuss Weissenhof
houses.
12. Mechanization takes Command is the
title of the key Modernist text by
Sigfried Giedion (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1948), which
followed his more famous Space,
Time and Architecture of 1941.
13. The French did this earlier and
more devastatingly than us,
dividing off the role of designer
from production.

Admirably perverse: tectonic expression and the puzzles of Galerie Goetz

Illustration credits
Author, 14, 8, 10, 11, 1518
Harvard University, 7
Wilfried Wang and Herzog &
de Meuron, 5, 6, 9, 1214
Biography
Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of
Architecture at the University of
Sheffield. His research, primarily
focussed on the alternative or organic
modernist tradition, has produced
many publications, including Hans
Scharoun (London: Phaidon, 1995),
Hugo Hring: The Organic versus the
Geometric (Stuttgart: Menges, 1999),
Gnter Behnisch (Basel: Birkhuser,
2000), Modern Architecture through Case
Studies (Oxford: Architectural Press,
2002), Gunnar Asplund (London:
Phaidon, 2006) and Peter Hbner:
Building as a Social Process (Stuttgart:
Menges, 2007). As a journalist and
critic, he is a frequent contributor to
The Architectural Review, The Architects
Journal and other international
periodicals.
Authors address
Prof. Peter Blundell Jones
Arts Tower, University of Sheffield
Western Bank
Sheffield, s10 2tn
p.blundelljones@sheffield.ac.uk

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