by Robin Boyd
If the architect cannot produce a strong formal idea at the beginning the building must plod on to become either an incoherent assortment of practical solutions or coherent in a contrived, noncommittal, stereotyped routine, begging to be enlivened by features. But it takes a really rabid Featurist to demand features on a structure as self-reliant as Melbourne’s Music Bowl.
The making of any artistic statement strong and clear is of course not enough if the statement happens to be irrelevant. And when, for instance, an architect has not properly assimilated the programme, or when he is by nature impatient with the details of programmes, it sometimes occurs that he prematurely pounces on a motive which bears little relation to the physical requirements. The crystallization of a theme is usually a point of no return in the process of design, the strong idea bringing with it a compulsion which few architects have the strength to resist. During the developmental stage they may discover that the theme does not suit all the conditions; consequently something must suffer. According to temperament, some architects twist the theme to suit the programme. Others amend the programme to fit the theme; as happened in an extreme way in Wright’s spiral Guggenheim museum in New York: a triumphantly non-Featurist building with a motive so strong it appeared to overwhelm even its author. In this case it seems that Wright was never adequately briefed on the gallery requirements. The motive struck him with what must have been sledgehammer force while he was isolated in his desert workshop. There it possessed him. At no time did it permit him to bend to the practical requirements of those who had to run the museum. When he learned their problems later he had to dismiss the problems (‘If the pictures don’t fit, cut them in half’). The spiral now ruled everything. One may find other examples of incompatibility between requirements and motive in some self-consciously monumental buildings in Australia. Their obvious functional failure is observed intently by the Featurist, not without a hint of sadistic pleasure. They confirm the Featurist’s distrust of firm statements and his adherence to a non-committal basis for all design. They almost give him a touch of intellectual justification to add to the powerful economic argument in favour of Featurism.
But the great idea in architecture is not simply a matter of geometry. When the architect confers an idea on the building project, he experiences a rare phase of his work when he is as free of the worst nagging practical considerations as a sculptor contemplating a block of stone or a painter confronting a clean canvas. If he is moved, if he has the desirable flash of inspiration, something within himself ignites it. This may be the desire for a certain atmospheric quality in the space to be enclosed, or a certain structural bias, or an attitude to the environment of the proposed building. Irrational influences will enter; the moment of conception will be shaded by the architect’s own background and mood, by sympathy for a charming site or stimulation by the personality of his client, by religious dedication or good humour or any other private emotional response to the situation set by the programme, the site, the surroundings, the social implications, the entire building problem. And the great idea is also influenced by one’s understanding of the nature of architecture.
Through the ages, at least before the arrival of modern technology, circumstances have changed people and their shelters, causing great differences from nation to nation and from region to region in the colour of skin, in language, taste, haircuts, table manners, dress, church services and so on. But underneath all the material and physical differences, underneath social, psychological and taste differences, underneath the cultural veneer of civilization, human nature is always human nature and architectural nature is architectural nature. The ancient question of this nature, the continuing essence of art in the mother art, is the crux of any philosophical discussion of the shape of the man-made world. Now it has to be examined again; for the best counter to Featurism is real architecture, and the only hope for real architecture lies in much wider understanding of its potential. What can architecture do for an occupant that a non-committal building with a nice couple of features can’t do? What, in short, is the secret of architecture?
In the course of picking over the world’s history for features that would add a moment’s titillation to pedestrian structures, Australia built up a smattering of knowledge about architectural styles and a scorn for architectural theory. In the pattern of an active people, happier when doing than when theorising, the Australians most interested in architecture, including even the keener students of architecture, have always inclined towards a concentration on fine detail, craftsmanship and elements of good taste, rather than a puzzling over the reasons for the different basic shapes and forms of building. Nevertheless it was hard to avoid noticing that the revolutionary movement that went under the general heading of Modern Architecture was not in fact a single style but a number of different styles, some of which could be given names: for instance, the ‘Organic’ and the ‘International Style’. There is in fact a forest of fashions, mannerisms and misunderstanding within the modern movement, and this is profoundly unsettling to many architects, whose work means nothing if not the attempt to create order. At this time the schools are full of questions. Should a building express its function or its structure? Can it be free to express an emotion? How can one reconcile humanism with mechanization, and which way is architecture to go now that the opposing traditional styles are all vanquished and it has nothing to fight but its own confusion? There is now no agreed basis for argument firmer than taste, and few people are so unwise or unsophisticated as to believe they can always rely on that.
In some periods when most cultivated people shared the ideals of the artists, the ground was ready prepared for the critic. When he made pronouncements his audience understood and appreciated the scale on which he was judging. In any of the golden eras of building the critic, the architect, the patron and the educated public agreed on a code of design. There was room for critical discussion only on interpretation and execution of the code. Today in some other arts a code applies; not in painting or sculpture—the disagreements between schools and individuals and the lack of accepted values often produce chaotic contradictions in the criticism of these arts—but a code applies to some extent in music and literature and to a great extent in the livelier arts. If a drama critic writes that such-and-such a play is unreal, unimaginative and the acting is unconvincing, every newspaper reader gains a fairly precise impression of the evening that lies ahead of him at that theatre. But if the same adjectives are applied to a building—and of course they can be applied without change of meaning—no one is much wiser. The sensitive layman, wanting to know more, seeking experiences parallel with those he has enjoyed in the understanding of other arts, seizes on the word imagination. But immediately he is lost again; between the desert Taliesin of Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the flashier new private bank branches in any progressive Australian town lies practically the total range of architectural sensitivity, creativeness and sincerity; yet there are cultivated and sensitive laymen who can hardly distinguish between the two.
In all periods without a code of artistic behaviour the more thoughtful critics have felt obliged to provide one, hoping to formulate rules which would have universal application and be binding on all, irrespective of emotional incidents and individual tastes. In the Augustan age of Rome Vitruvius first performed this task for architecture. He specified the three essentials: ‘…strength, utility and beauty’. ‘Strength,’ he wrote, ‘arises from…making a proper choice of materials without parsimony. Utility arises from a judicious distribution of the parts, so that the purposes be duly answered, and that each have its proper situation. Beauty is produced by the pleasing appearance and good taste of the whole, and by the dimensions of all the parts being duly proportioned to each other.’ Sir Henry Wotton, paraphrasing these remarks in 1624, defined the elements of architecture as ‘commodity, firmness and delight’. Sir Henry’s definition is still the staple of architectural theory, despite Sir Geoffrey Scott’s objection that the three elem
ents are diverse and incommensurable and can furnish no general estimate or true comparison of style. The tripartite definition nevertheless is broad and flexible enough to make a convincing and convenient axiom. It is in fact so broad as to be of no practical value in guiding anyone through the shoals surrounding the few clear landmarks of modern building. For more exact guidance various critics and the more articulate architects have tried to formulate additional axioms and definitions; indeed the insecurity of architecture’s position in society is well illustrated by the fact that everyone in the last hundred and fifty years who has essayed a book on architectural theory has felt obliged at some stage to invent a new definition of the art.
Complacent fanciers of architecture scorn all these earnest efforts. While admitting the desirability in certain circumstances of a code of criticism, they oppose all attempts to tie art down to any sort of formal agreement. ‘Does it look right?’ they ask. ‘That is the only test.’ They quote Oscar Wilde: ‘There are two ways of disliking art; one is to dislike it; the other is to like it rationally.’ Any rule binding any art, they claim, will choke all life and subtlety out of it. If a man has not the native taste to appreciate a fine building, no amount of argument will convince him; if he has, don’t hound him. Let him enjoy it in his own way.
Here is the difficulty which arises in some form in every study of any art: should we attempt to define it, to tie down what ‘right’ is when we say something looks right—right to whom, when, where?— or must we leave it free? Or can we do both, define it just sufficiently for comprehension and appreciation on the widest plane but not sufficiently to dampen enjoyment of it on any plane? No doubt every critic of every art and age has tried for this compromise, and today the architectural critic is still trying. He is seeing a total order, a coherent pattern in man’s flimsy structures on the face of the globe. His order is not the architect’s order of beautiful plastic form. He sees that the most sensitive intellects which twentieth-century architecture has produced might create only a more refined sort of chaos if their buildings sat down together to reform the world. His is not the planner’s order of a blueprint for expansion of city or nation which may untangle the traffic and pipe-lines and even on occasion provide a glorious perspective to the war memorial. It is not a practical, nor an aesthetic, nor even a visual order. He is intent on the order of ideas, on the ultimate order of man’s motive for building.
The search leads many critics where few can follow them. Last century John Ruskin found his order in a divine purity of decorative style, and he passionately felt the need to communicate his discovery to others. Before he could write a book on his dearly loved Stones of Venice he felt obliged to write a preceding volume laying The Foundations of his appreciation. He wished to determine ‘some law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and of all time; and by help of which…we may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular.’ He thus led himself to state ‘three great branches of architectural virtue’: that any building should act well, speak well and look well. By acting well he meant in effect the first two parts of Sir Henry Wotton’s tripartite definition: commodity and firmness. He insisted that a building should answer its purpose ‘in the simplest way, with no over-expenditure of means’. His third virtue, to ‘look well’, was Sir Henry’s ‘delight’, and his second, to ‘speak well’, meant that a building should express its purpose in its character. But he was not quite sure how this should best be accomplished so he was content to leave the question of architectural expression ‘for incidental notice only’ while he subjected the other virtues to laws.
With every respect for the Venetian magic we do not see St Mark’s Square today through Ruskin’s eyes. Even in his own day he was criticized for insisting on using the words ‘beauty’ and ‘ornamentation’ interchangeably, and his rhapsody on Venice as a series of ornamented boxes finds little response with us, who are more impressed by the spaces, perspectives, and relationships between the buildings and their two paved squares and the vertical exclamation marks and the great open vista to the sea. Ruskin’s metaphysics succeeded only in doing what many earlier architectural theorists had done: in building an order upon the moist foundations of his special private delights, preconceptions and prejudices in building.
We may be as precise as Ruskin was about the things we admire in Venice, and no doubt a future generation, reading the various appreciations of St Mark’s Square still being written in the twentieth century, will respect our reasons for admiring it, as we can respect Ruskin’s. But when we try to devise an order, immutable rules of architectural behaviour, on the strength of our own visual reactions, we are being pompous and ridiculous. The beauty of the square may well be attributed by a future generation to qualities unperceived by us, and not consciously intended by its creators. If we are seeking universal canons we should be wary about stressing our preoccupation with space. We may turn out to be as misled as Ruskin was in his concentration on the intricacies of opaque form. He who could not be daunted even by the prospect of the next century went so far as to censure ICI House and the whole curtain-wall era. Ruminating on the great glass spectacle of the Crystal Palace in 1851 he saw a future which he could not approve, for it fitted no pattern of the past. ‘It is thought by many,’ he wrote, ‘that we shall forthwith have a great part of our architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result from the studied employment of these materials.’ He saw no cause for optimism. The glass, he believed, would lead firstly to the degradation of colour and secondly to the end of the majesty of form. ‘You can never,’ Ruskin insisted, ‘have any noble architecture in transparent or lustrous glass or enamel. Form is only expressible in its perfection on opaque bodies, without lustre. This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable.’ But it was not of course any such thing, and the ‘new forms of beauty’ are recognized by us in some, if not all, of the shimmering, reflecting transparencies of modern commercial building.
There is no constancy in the appreciation of architectural forms. The conception of beauty, the things that delight, may change radically within a few years even in the towers of architectural learning. A thousand styles of mass and surface treatment have had their day somewhere, sometime, when they were judged sublime. The task of extracting from them specific universal laws of architecture is like seeking universal manners of good taste in social intercourse. Yet architecture has always been clearly distinguishable from routine buildings; there must be a single golden key which turns in any age and transforms unfeeling stone or steel: the key to the critic’s order.
The search for this key has led many to amplifications of the Platonic and Vitruvian theories, and others to poetic analogies. ‘Architecture is frozen music,’ Schelling mused, to the delight of a romantic generation. The twentieth century is not satisfied so easily. In its search for something more precise and businesslike the themes of integral order and organic unity reappear frequently. ‘Only those buildings can be accepted as architecture which are transfigured by a gesture of unification and have acquired the tension characteristic of an organism,’ wrote Victor Hammer in 1952 (A Theory of Architecture), drawing heavily on Sullivan and Wright. The key is seen by many to be contained in the idea that architecture is a vital and sympathetic expression of society. ‘Architecture sums up the civilization it enshrines,’ wrote Lewis Mumford in 1924 (Sticks and Stones). ‘Architecture is the art of making the content and the forms of a civilization coincide,’ wrote William Lescaze in 1942 (On Being an Architect).
The four spiritual fathers of twentieth-century architecture, who have or had little else of theory or practice conspicuously in common, subscribe in their writings to most of the above generalizations and come close to agreement on definitions of their art. ‘Good architecture should be a projection of life itself,’ said Walter Gropius in May 1937 (The Architectural Record). ‘Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from gene
ration to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his circumstances as they change,’ wrote Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 (An Organic Architecture), later giving capital initials to the Great Spirit. Le Corbusier also speaks of ‘the pure creation of the spirit’ and in 1937 he defined architecture as ‘the harmonious and proportional disposition of materials used for the sake of erecting living works’ (When the Cathedrals Were White). Mies van der Rohe, contrary to appearances, agrees with the others in writing on almost all counts. Regarding the Great Spirit of architecture and its pure creation from the human spirit, he said in 1950: ‘Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.’ Later, speaking of architecture as a projection of organic nature, he explained that his aim in building is to ‘emphasize the organic principle of order’, and touching on the question of artistic unity in the design he told of the ideal of ‘achieving the successful relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole.’ On architecture as the expression of society he said in 1923: ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space; living, changing, new.’
Thus it seems that the different camps of modern architecture can still meet under the one roof, provided the eaves are broad enough. Despite many conflicting ideas, technical habits and personalities, unanimity of aim still shines through. But immediately the definitions are made more precise, dissenters start to drift away. Even Louis Sullivan’s attractive and widely accepted idea that architecture is a further stage of organic form (‘Nature who made the mason made the house’) is not acceptable to Joseph Hudnut. In a series of lectures in 1952 titled The Three Lamps of Modern Architecture he tried to snuff out some of the new, more pretentious lamps while defending architecture as a vital and eloquent medium for an artist. He dismissed the thought of an architect being able to extend organic nature, or express progress, or democracy, or anything but himself. Our buildings, he said, involuntarily express something of our era, our technologies and our democracy, simply because they exist in our time, but architects cannot take any credit for this and should not continue to believe that it excuses them from the performance of their duties as creative artists.
