What is eclectic architecture? In fact, what is the word ‘eclectic’?
The ancient Greeks used the word eklektikos, which meant you were choosing the best from a range of options. In a religious or spiritual context this implies not sticking narrowly to a single dogma, but trying a variety of approaches. This is a good starting point for a post about an eclectic building.
But first a bit more context.
Eclectic architecture has been traditionally associated with a period in the 19th century when European designers applied a variety of styles to their buildings. Rather than favour a classical approach based on Greek, Roman and Byzantine temples and churches, or by contrast, a Gothic approach based on medieval cathedrals and chapels, architects decided to ‘pick and mix’ from a host of different historic sources. In Victorian Britain the ‘War of the Styles’ became celebrated.
Someone surely needed to produce order from this apparent chaos?
The first attempt to do so came from the increasing use of metal in building construction, but was limited to specific types of engineered structures such as bridges, factories, warehouses, railway sheds, public halls (the largest being the Crystal Palace in London) and towers (most famously by Gustave Eiffel in Paris). It was only with the appearance of urban office and apartment buildings using iron and steel framing that the new materials started to become more acceptable on an everyday basis, though not obviously visible to the observer of Chicago and New York skyscrapers. By then metal columns and beams had acquired a more fire-resistant cladding in the form of plaster, cement or even concrete and this naturally led to reinforced combinations; an inverted system where the majority of volume was made up of hardened liquid stone around a thinner metallic structure.
Despite the new technical developments, there was a spurt of rejuvenated eclecticism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, through Arts & Craft, Art Nouveau and Secessionist architectural genres; it focused on vernacular decorative approaches, but for European cities like Barcelona, Brussels, Glasgow, Paris, Riga and Vienna, in a more organic or geometric manner. However, by the end of the First World War eclectic architecture had been largely eclipsed by a more standardised, industrial approach encapsulated in international modernism. It was only with the rise of postmodernist architecture in the 1960s and 1970s that eclecticism came round again; though Frank Lloyd-Wright was arguably ahead of his times when designing the ‘Usonian’ or ranch house style of American homes that found favour with his compatriots during the late 1930s and beyond.
Which single building then to choose as an example of eclectic architecture?
I think I will go with the Glasgow School of Art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (the below image is Creative Commons licence see attribution - note: it shows the building after a fire in 2014, and there was a further fire in 2018, with slow progress since finalising the renovation project …). This is partly because I have undertaken some research on Mackintosh, his contemporaries in Glasgow and his projects in Scotland and further afield, helped by a fantastic website which I’d highly recommend. The Glasgow building used a range of original and borrowed architectural ideas in a distinctive manner, so managing to combine the old and and the new.
Mackintosh has been associated with the Secessionist art movement which originated in 1890s Munich and is closely linked to Viennese architects such as Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Maria Olbrich. However, I think, like Lloyd Wright in America (who was a generation younger) and Gaudi in Barcelona, Mackintosh had his own unique approach to architecture.
Perhaps it is individuality that singles out eclectic architecture and takes us back to the original Greek word?