How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

but as a product and expression of and a contribution to, the living present. We shall think of it in terms of life, as simulating the organic and functional qualities of a living thing. It will be all but a living thing, both as it takes its place amid the life of its surroundings and also as it serves the needs of life in its specific capacity.

Already we have thought of buildings as organic, as structures that have been built upon a well-considered plan, with parts that perform their individual functions in the common purpose. We have also noted that the character of the structure was affected by the actual methods of building and the material employed. We have learned to be critical on certain points. Was the plan a fit one for its purpose? Did the façades conform to or confuse or contradict the character of the plan? Did the design conform to the purpose of the building and the methods of construction, or was it, however handsome, in effect a sham? Was it overladen with arbitrary enrichments that had little or no relation to structure and were mainly or only designed for display? Did it sacrifice the necessities of the interior to merely æsthetic considerations?

And these processes of appreciation which we have acquired the habit of applying to buildings of the past, we have but to bring to bear upon the buildings of the present. For the architecture of to-day is true or false, good or bad, reasonable and admirable, not because it does or does not conform to such and such types, but because it succeeds or fails in meeting the practical and æsthetic requirements of to-day.

Need of Public Appreciation of the Art.—Hence the need of an intelligent appreciation of architecture on the part of the public. It is requisite for their own sake as well as for that of the architect. One of the great difficulties with which the latter has to contend is the ignorance and indifference not only of the public but also of official authorities. They do not give the sincere architect the encouragement of intelligent praise; they exercise no restraint upon the insincere and inefficient. They dismiss all responsibility for the result by “putting it up” to the “expert.” Architecture, in consequence, is liable to be regarded not as an art but merely as a profession. Thus aid and encouragement are given to those architects who practise it mainly or solely as a “business proposition.”

And in these days the responsibility of the public is more necessary than it ever was. For the problems of architecture are so infinitely more various and exacting, that they demand for their successful solution the co-operation of the layman. But, although people profess democratic ideas, they act in the matter of architecture as though they were living in aristocratic times, when respect was paid to birth, and not in times when we are trying to cultivate respect for common humanity. To-day, if we are true to our professed ideals, the tenement house of the worker is as important in the social scheme as the palace of the rich or the country house of the well-to-do. And it should be a subject of public concern.

Or, to consider another of the many new types demanded by modern conditions—the factory. It must meet the need of the specific industry. That is its utilitarian necessity. But there is also the humanitarian necessity that it shall be a fit place for the men and women who spend in it one-half of their waking lives. And, again, there is what we may call the communal necessity, as it affects the outside lives of the community, that the factory shall not be a thing of ugliness or drear monotony, sordidly devastating the possible beauty of the locality. For we have advanced little in civilisation if we are content to substitute for the grim castle of the Middle Ages, surrounded by its huddle of retainers’ huts, a grim fortress of industry, entrenched amid the mean homes of men and women, not considered in their individual and collective capacity as human beings, but massed under the mechanical term—“operatives.”

And what is true of the factory is true of the retail shops and department stores, city markets, warehouses, docks, and watersides, and of the hundred and one varieties of need created by modern industry and commerce. It is also as true of the provision for the cultural needs of the community in churches, schools, colleges, libraries, and museums, as well as for needs of recreation and health—theatres, concert halls, moving picture houses, dance-halls, baths, hospitals and parks. But why attempt to enumerate the innumerable problems that modern life presents to the architect? The point is that all involve sociological considerations, affecting intimately the lives of common humanity. Architecture, in fact, when properly considered and practised, is the great democratic art, which through co-operation of artist and layman, may become one of the greatest means of human betterment. How essential, therefore, that the understanding and appreciation of it should be fostered by public education!

Since this is the purpose of the present book, which only incidentally has suggested the history of the art, it is not possible or necessary to attempt to cover the modern manifestation of it in all the countries. It must suffice to allude briefly to those of Great Britain and the United States, in which architectural activity has been conspicuous, though the results are widely different.

MODERN MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

In Great Britain the modern tendency has been especially marked in the direction of independence and individuality. It began with certain movements, which perhaps might be more correctly styled fashions. There was the Queen Anne revival, which, although it involved much that was tricky and much gerrymandering in construction, drew renewed attention to the capabilities of brick and its suitability to the climate. Further, from the fact that it gained the popularity of a fashion, it encouraged the public to take some sort of interest in architecture. And this interest was further stimulated by the “Morris Movement.”

William Morris’s Movement.—It was the limitation of William Morris, that in his zeal for things Mediæval he had no toleration for any other forms of decoration. Moreover, he assumed that the art of the Middle Ages was created solely by craftsmen working in harmonious co-operation. He refused to believe that their work was controlled by a master designer and inveighed in general against architects as the cause of everything that is objectionable in subsequent architecture. In both respects, therefore, his influence was reactionary rather than helping forward. But, on the other hand, it has lasted and borne valuable fruit in promoting a regard for honest craftsmanship, on which he laid essential stress, and in reviving a recognition of the parts played by painting and sculpture and the decorative arts generally in alliance with architecture. Accordingly, one indirect result of Morris’s influence has been the increased attention given to the character and quality of simple masonry, a refreshing and salutary reaction from the notion that the interest of architecture depends on picturesque variety of detail and ornament. There was even a group of young architects who, inspired by Morris’s idea of craftsmanwork, sought to confine their designs to the simplest elements of building. They would be first, last, and all the time, builders; all precedents of architectural detail should be disregarded; they would confine themselves to the simplest abstractions of structural elements and out of these in time a new decorative vernacular might be evolved.

It is interesting to note the analogy between this aim and that of Matisse and others in painting. In both arts it represents a revolt against the sophistication and mechanicalism that are apt to result from the repetition of school-learned styles. It would dig away the surface and get down to the sub-soil, in which elemental principles are rooted, in order to encourage a growth that more nearly may conform to modern needs and ideals.

On the other hand, there is the obvious objection, too obvious by the way to be accepted as conclusive, that the past has so grown into the present, the inheritance has become so integral a part of present understanding and feeling, that one cannot eliminate it from one’s consciousness by taking thought, as one can strip one’s body of clothes. Meanwhile, although this argument seems plausible the fact remains that in painting, at any rate, many artists, ignoring argument in favour of actual doing, are clothing their ideas in new forms that are coming to seem reasonable to an increasing number of people.

“Free Classic” Movement.—However, many architects, accepting the inheritance of the past and yet themselves in revolt against the scholastic reproduction of the styles, initiated a movement in favour of what they called “Free Classic.” Their endeavour was to discover the elementals in a given style and to use them with flexible understanding and feeling and with free play, especially of decorative accessories. The first to give practical evidence of this idea was R. Norman Shaw, R. A., in the New Zealand Chambers, in Leadenhall Street, London, which were erected as far back as 1873.

It was an artist’s essay in personal liberation; the work of a man who, while he did not love the Classics less, loved life and his own participation in it more, who claimed for himself the artist’s birthright of personal expression and creativeness. Fortunately his adventure aroused considerable interest in the intelligent public, while other architects saw in it a promise of their own artistic deliverance. The result has been for Great Britain a genuine rebirth of architecture as a living and personal art. In no other country have the variety and versatility of our modern life been more freely expressed in its buildings. Not always happily, no doubt. The purist may point to some as “awful examples,” and thus seek to justify his belief in safe mediocrity rather than what he considers dangerous latitude. But the purist is not an individualist and Great Britain is individualistic, even to a fault. Therefore, what her architects are doing is racy of the country’s temperament—a thing commendable in itself. Meanwhile, there is an abundance of recent buildings in which reasonableness and adventure are happily united and a sound regard for the utilities and for structural logic are wedded to originality and taste.

In the past twenty-five years London, for example, has been transformed into one of the most architecturally impressive cities of Europe. And not in the way of aping in more or less perfunctory fashion the splendours of imperial Rome; but in a spirit of artistic individual enterprise, and with that courage even to make mistakes, provided the end be liberty, that befits the Metropolis of self-governing Dominions.

MODERN MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

Since the middle of the nineteenth century the United States has experienced an extraordinary activity in building. An unprecedented demand was created by the opening up of the West and the rapid increase of population and wealth, as well as by the destruction wrought by the great fires in Chicago and Boston. On the other hand, circumstances led to the development of a new method of construction—that of the “steel cage.” Meanwhile the new period discovered two architects—Richard Morris Hunt (1828-1895) and Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886)—whose influence had a marked effect upon the architectural development.

Hunt and Richardson.—The former, younger brother of W. M. Hunt, the painter, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1828; while Richardson, ten years his junior, was a native of Louisiana. Both received their training in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and by their influence established the vogue for that celebrated school which has so strongly affected architectural progress in America. When they returned home—Hunt in 1855 and Richardson in 1865—they brought back a thoroughly scientific training, already reinforced by practical experience in Paris. And the genius of the one complemented