Counter Construction

Definition

Counter construction names the De Stijl strategy — and its descendants — of generating architecture from the interplay of a form and its counter-form: horizontal and vertical planes "exploded apart and suspended in space." In Deyong's account, the shift happens in Theo van Doesburg's Counter Constructions for the Hôtel Particulier (1923, with Cornelis van Eesteren): having learned from van Eesteren to draw in axonometric — "a drawing convention that shows the plan and section simultaneously" — van Doesburg drew "counter constructions of the hotel's cubic masses." These "mark an important shift in De Stijl's thinking about the generative elements of architecture, here distilled to horizontal and vertical planes rather than lines or masses" — a shift from J.J.P. Oud's sculptural cubic masses to van Doesburg's painterly planes (Café Aubette, 1927, where he "rotated Mondrian's abstract grid on the diagonal, possibly to neutralize the horizontal and vertical lines of the existing architecture").

The strategy migrates to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (1929) — "a counter composition of planes and volumes" in which "instead of the three primary colors, Mies has substituted marble, chrome, and glass," and which is "dynamic, changing in time as the visitor zigzags through an enfilade of open spaces." Its fullest architectural analysis is Rowe and Slutzky's account of Le Corbusier's Villa Stein at Garches (see phenomenal-transparency): "not only a composition of solid elements but also a counter-composition of implied spatial volumes" — terraces, balconies and canopies as "objects and their counter forms." Deyong generalizes the doubling of the solid-void (figure-ground) relation as "a design strategy that is still relevant today," its most recent manifestation being UN Studio's "blob-to-box" model, "where the shape of the void has a presence equal to the object-ness of the blob." The counter construction is thus the compositional hinge of the alternate history of the modern interior: the strategy by which the void — the interior — acquires generative, form-producing status equal to the object.

Key Thinkers

• (Discussed in the source, not yet paged — see log: Theo van Doesburg & Cornelis van Eesteren — Counter Constructions for the Hôtel Particulier (1923); J.J.P. Oud — the cubic-mass alternative; Yves-Alain Bois — "The De Stijl Idea," on the distillation's slow emergence.)
• Sarah Deyong — the concept's historiographer: De Stijl → Mies → Garches → UN Studio as one continuous strategy.
• Le Corbusier — Villa Stein at Garches, where the counter-composition of implied volumes is documented in plan and section.
• (UN Studio — Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos — the "blob-to-box" model as the strategy's most recent manifestation; discussed in the source, not paged.)

Related Concepts

• Phenomenal Transparency — the Rowe & Slutzky elaboration of the same solid-void doubling at Garches.
• Space-Time Continuum — the concept the counter constructions embody: plan and section shown simultaneously, planes suspended in time.
• Abstraction — the reduction to "minimum abstract essentials" from which the counter construction emerges.
• Style — the counter construction as the Riegl/Worringer trajectory's architectural product.
• Poché — the complementary figure: poché is the thickened solid that hollows; the counter construction is the void that generates form.
• Movement Perception — the temporally dynamic composition experienced by the zigzagging visitor.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• A history of style and the modern interior (Deyong 2018) — the Counter Constructions' definition and shift to planes; the Barcelona Pavilion as counter composition; the Garches counter-composition of implied volumes; the blob-to-box continuation.
• Movement and Myth (Croft 2000/2006) — the strategy's built domestic realization and the reception history Deyong's formal lineage omits: the Schröder House as "an aesthetically composed work of the Dutch De Stijl movement" whose "close allegiance to a contemporary art movement… formed the basis of critical appraisal" — "More than any of the other buildings that make up the established modernist canon – the Villa Savoye, the Barcelona Pavilion, et al" (p. 77); the elevation ("the unconventional elevations at the end of a conventional Utrecht street") as the controversial surface, "more controversial than the interior arrangements" (p. 77); and the counter-construction performed twice a day: the partitions "drawn at night to separate off the four corners of the space… do not make sense unless all are closed or all open" (p. 75) — the sliding plane as a lived composition on a daily cycle. See schroder-house, flexible-interior.
• Spatial seductions (Meninato 2018) — the manifesto text and the alternative lineage: van Doesburg's "Towards a Plastic Architecture" (1924) — "The new architecture possesses no single passive factor. It has overcome the opening (in the wall). With its openness the window plays an active role in opposition to the closedness of the wall surface. Nowhere does an opening or a gap occupy the foreground; everything is strictly determined by contrast" (quoted in the chapter from Conrad's anthology, p. 79); Contra-Construction as "a formal laboratory whose ultimate goal appears to substantiate the claims of the manifesto," blurring inside/outside and top/bottom, with the door "conceived as the absence of a wall" and windows "not punctures in the wall, but rather openings that are left between the planes"; and Duchamp's door and window works ("an alternative to Van Doesburg's experimental Contra-Construction house") as the alternate, non-formalist genealogy of the architectural opening. See readymade.

Open Questions

• Is the counter construction a drawing convention (axonometric), a composition (planes and volumes), or a design strategy (form/counter-form doubling)? The chapter's examples suggest all three, with different futures for each.
• Does UN Studio's computational blob-to-box still belong to the perceptual lineage (Riegl → De Stijl → Rowe), or does "the shape of the void has a presence equal to the object-ness of the blob" describe a digital counter-ontology?
• If the counter construction makes the interior generative, why did the canonical functionalist history absorb Mies and Garches while suppressing the interior-centred reading Deyong restores?