Hans Rudolf Bosshard|Typography
December 31, 2009
Building Blocks of Type
++++
Placing inscriptions on buildings is an age-old custom. Obviously the criteria involved in inscribing letters on edifices are quite different from those that apply to book typography. Outdoor lettering by its very nature has something monumental about it because its effect is meant to carry across fairly long distances. The letters on Roman monuments, the capitalis monumentalis and the capitalis rustica, are all capitals. During the Renaissance, the capitalis monumentalis was modernized and refined for use on monuments, but for added distinction it was also applied to humanistic book typography, which was derived from the Carolingian script of the eighth century and originally consisted solely of minuscules (lowercase letters).
Herbert Bayer, lettering above the main entrance to the Bauhaus in Dessau, 1926
In the lettering that Herbert Bayer applied to the Bauhaus Building in Dessau in 1926, a structure designed by Walter Gropius, the strokes of each letter (ductus) follow those of Universal, the Grotesk typeface that Bayer had developed in about 1924 based on the Constructivist idea that Latin letters consist of straights and curves. Bayer eliminated the diagonal of the A so that the series of letters in BAUHAUS consists solely of verticals, horizontals and rounded parts. The phonetic arches that constitute the two AU sounds are reflected in the circular arch of the two As and Us, which complement each other in the full circles of the separate diphthongs. The typeface suits the sound: a full, round, glorious letter. This is only true for the vertical version on the studio building, however. Above the main entrance, the horizontal word image is compressed into a small space and loses all its charm.
The café-restaurant De Unie in Rotterdam, which was designed by J. J. P. Oud, built in 1924–25 and destroyed in the bombing of 1940, was rebuilt in another part of the city in 1985—the outside of it, that is, the impressive façade. The highly complex composition (it’s really a “painting”) using the colors of De Stijl—white, grey, black, yellow, red and blue—the two dominating angles in white and red that constitute the surface of the wall, and the extremely sharp capitals, was originally located between the façades of banal, late-nineteenth-century buildings. The uncompromising new façade could only have been a product of the De Stijl movement, however. The word image is different from everything we’ve been accustomed to seeing in this area. In Oud’s lettering, the diagonals have not been eliminated, as they were in Bayer’s, but the pointed angles are accentuated. The letter S, shortened to a flat festoon, as well as the A, the T and the I, leave real holes in the series of letters. Vertical lines of type with perpendicular letters are always barely readable, after all, but readability is not a criterion in this architectural letter image. Typography and architecture together form a beautiful, arresting emblem.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Guggenheim Museum, New York. The first designs for the lettering were made in 1943; the museum was built in the years 1956–59.
Two examples from modern times: the tight (but not too tight) placement of the letters in the open passage leading to the Salvation Army shelter in Paris, built by Le Corbusier in the years 1929–33, in a condensed type, red against the blue wall and yellow against the red, fits very well in the architectural space. The lettering for the Guggenheim Museum in New York is almost too widely spaced and takes up practically the entire long concrete band, so the lettering can be read from one point. Something of the uniqueness and greatness of this museum, an otherwise unassuming part of the urban landscape, is also expressed in the design of the lettering. The type had already been used in Frank Lloyd Wright’s first design in 1943, but here the letter assumes more of the character of the Futura light.
The lettering of the Museum für Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt am Main is the work of American architect Richard Meier and consists of black letters on a grey background, and it’s a pleasure to see how much sensitivity and respect he had for the building’s white exterior. The handsome classical typography à la Bodoni and its placement on the side of a block of stone (not too high) are devoid of any forced or deliberately intended design.
The Fondation Cartier in Paris is almost insubstantial in comparison. It’s a steel-and-glass composition designed by Jean Nouvel in 1994. The glass wall, eight stories high and without any interior or exterior, divides the building and park from the street. Just as uncomplicated is the lettering, which is at eye level and appears partly clear against a dark background and partly against a clear polished metal strip of the building lying behind it. It’s a glorious example of outdoor lettering that connects with the architecture – except that, unfortunately, it’s already been destroyed: because of the etching on the back, a rectangle of the glass surface that has no visible, formal relationship with the series of letters was made opaque in order to make the lettering more “readable.” A horror!
++++
The Triumph of Typography is edited by publisher Henk Hoeks and design critic Ewan Lentjes, and includes contributions from: Peter Bil’ak, Petr van Blokland, Hans Rudolf Bosshard, Paul van Capelleveen, Roger Chartier, Paul Dijstelberge, Yuri Engelhardt, Willem Frijhoff, Christof Gassner, Michael Giesecke, Britt Grootes, Gerard Hadders, Henk Hoeks, Ralf de Jong, Ewan Lentjes, Ellen Lupton, Lev Manovich, Jack Post, Rick Poynor, José Teunissen, Wouter Weijers. The book is designed by Patrick Coppens, and published by TERRA with ArtEZ Press. It can be purchased here.
Observed
View all
Observed
By Hans Rudolf Bosshard
Recent Posts
Make a Plan to Vote ft. Genny Castillo, Danielle Atkinson of Mothering Justice Black balled and white walled: Interiority in Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”L’Oreal Thompson Payton|Essays
‘Misogynoir is a distraction’: Moya Bailey on why Kamala Harris (or any U.S. president) is not going to save us New kids on the bloc?