Composite Modernism: The Architectural Strategies of Paul Nelson and Oscar Nitzchke

<img src="../legacy-images/nelson-mpstreet.jpg"><br />

In prior articles on Parisian architecture of the 1930s, most writers have discussed the work of Paul Nelson and Oscar Nitzchke separately, relating the two only with the Palais de Decouverte of 1938, the only project publically acknowledged as a collaboration between the two. Rarely mentioned is the fact that Nelson had hired Nitzchke as his firm's "head designer" as early as 1931, and that Nitzchke was deeply involved in the design of Nelson's "Prototype of a Small-Scale Hospital," the Health Complex at Lille, the Ismailia surgery pavilion, and the CBS Broadcasting building of 1936. In fact, the Maison Suspendu and the WGN Radio studio competition of 1938 are the only Nelson projects of the 1930s to be done entirely independent of Nitzchke; Nelson would accept the Palace of Discovery commission only on the condition that Nitzchke also be brought in. <br />
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It is only in recognizing this ongoing partnership, as well as the larger circle of architects and theorists the two were involved with, that their immensely innovative work can be adequately explained. The purpose of this essay is to delineate the architectural strategies of Paul Nelson and Oscar Nitzchke as they emerged in those "theoretical" projects from 1934 to 1938. Though these projects would remain for various reasons unbuilt, they were influential and well-publicized in their own day. They convey a breed of modernism -- a sensibility and formal approach to architecture -- truly unique to Paris of the 1930s, one that would be entirely eclipsed during the post-war reconstruction by the overly monumental and monosyllabic tendancies of Brutalism and the larger hegemony of the International Style. <br />
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Despite the obvious imprint of Perret, Corbusier, and Chareau, the mature work of Nelson and Nitzchke embodies a "composite" modernism quite distinct from its origins. Perret's emphasis on explicit structure would be kept, but often utilized in steel and in buildings simultaneously employing both compressive and tensile structural systems. The labored consistency of Perret's poche would be replaced by a method of explicit grafting, with each building becoming a sectored hybrid of rationalist concrete and constructivist steel. Corbusier's plan libre would be consciously pushed to the "free section" (a term in fact coined by Nelson), and the Ecole de Paris "stratification of space" (a poetic strategy Colin Rowe has described in detail) would be superseded by a notion of three-dimensional "spatial density and release" derived from Helion, Zervos, and Nelson's own readings of Leger's paintings of the early thirties. <br />
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Table of Contents:<br />
&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/C/Comp_Modrnism_715.html">Composite Modernism: The Architectural Strategies of Paul Nelson and Oscar Nitzchke</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN2_835.html">The Prototype for a Small-Scale Hospital and the Health City of Lille</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN3_833.html"><em>A Serious Point of Departure</em>: La Maison de la Rue St. Guillaume</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN4_831.html">Leger Analysis</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN5_830.html"><em>The Problem of the House</em> and <em>New Uses for Space</em>: Helion and the Maison Suspendu</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN6_828.html"><em>Poisson Soluble</em>: Architecture, Advertising, and the Maison de la Publicite</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN7_827.html">Palais de Decouverte and the Popular Front</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/N/NN8_825.html">Coda: The end of the partnership and the larger eclipse of the Parisian sensibility</a><br />

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<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/C/chronology_444.html">chronology | 1920-1939</a><br />
<a href="http://www.basilisk.com/B/Biblio_image_credits_524.html">Bibliography/Image Sources/Credits</a>