Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (39.2006)

Fig. 3- H. F. Waesemann: Villa Bichborn in Breslau, front view. „Zeitschrift für Bauwesen“, Vol. 7, 1857.

houses which served both mercantile and residential
purposes, and for which no models were to be found
in ancient Greek architecture, ought to be ‘based on
the ancient Roman architectural style or directly related to
the stylish héritage of the Italian building school’f4 Front
façades of town houses in compact settlements re-
quired, according to Stier, ‘a much clearer expression of
detailaesthetics {...} than offeredby the Greek art of con-
struction’ ,14 15 In 1828 Stier started teaching the course
in ‘Designing and Drawing Constructions’ at the
Berlin Academy, and lecturing on the history of ar-
chitecture, whereas in 1829, he started to teach
a course in ‘forms of ancient architecture’.16 In his lec-
tures, as one of the few academies, he presented not
only monuments of ancient art, but also works of
medieval masters.17 In his designing career Stier prop-
agated the solution of choosing appropriate style to
a particular construction task.
An opposite approach was represented by Cari
Boetticher, who, since 1839, had been teaching free-
hand drawing and ornamental design at the Berlin
Building Academy. Boetticher made an attempt to
impose the rules of Greek builders on the Contempo-
rary architecture. In 1852 he published a two-volu-
me work entitled Tectonics of Hellenes (Die Tektonik der
Hellenen), in which he presented a scientific theory of
14 Ibidem.
15 Ibidem.

Greek architecture. The author assumed that the form
of architectural divisions in Greek buildings reflected
the clarity of composition and logics of their construc-
tions. For Boetticher décorative éléments were ‘mere-
ly a symbolic expression of construction functions’,18 their
role was to illustrate the relation between parts of
the building. The opinions of the author of Tectonics
influenced the designing style of the whole généra-
tion of graduâtes from the Berlin Academy. In resi-
dential architecture, however, this theory was reduced
only to a characteristic composition of the façade, in
which the layout of particular décorative éléments
resulted from the construction requirements. This
meant that the basement or the ground floor of
a building had the form of a plinth supporting a flat
wall of higher stories, which were crowned by an ela-
boráte ‘entablature’. Of great popularity among the
designers of residential houses were the collections of
‘ancient’ Ornaments, systematically published by
Boetticher, which served as an infinite source of déco-
rative motifs for façades of tenement townhouses until
the mid of the 1870s.
Berlin was becoming the capital of German cul-
ture at a rather slow pace, neither did it ever achieve
such a high dass as Paris or London. Nevertheless
the artistic life of Berlin had a powerful influence on
16 BÖRSCH-SUPAN 1977 (see in note 9), p. 19; HOEPFNER,
W. -SCHWANDNER, E.-L.: Archäologische Bauforschung.
In: Berlin und die Antike ... (see in note 8), p. 343.
17 Ibidem.

18 BOTHE 1979 (see in note 8), p. 328.

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