Introduction to Appreciation of Architecture | ARCH 2401, Study notes of Architecture

Download Introduction to Appreciation of Architecture | ARCH 2401 and more Study notes Architecture in PDF only on Docsity! “Paul Gi of publi —Tracy Why Ar history: " diction The pur grips wi them, w well asi the arch “Archite “when i and awe us how Cape Co of Frank the higt Churche create deepest Why Are at buildi of lookir we expe awarene scale, sp. he show memorit “PaulG of publ Tracy Why Ai history * diction The pu gripsv them, well a! the an “Archi “wher andar us hav Cape of Fra the hi Churc Cte deepx Why, at bu of lac wee! awat scale he sk mer Copyright 9 2009 by Paul Goldber All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole orin patt, including illustsations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 18 of the US, Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), witht written permission from che publishers. Published with assistance fiom the Louis Stem Memorial und, Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Adabe Garamond type by Keystone Typeserting, Inc., Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, Prinucl in he United States of America. Photo editor: Natalie Matueschovsky Library of Congress Cateloging-in-Publication Data’ Goldberger, Paul. Why architecture matters / Paul Goldberger. pcm. Includes bibliographical references and index TSUN 978-0-300-14430-7 (cloth : alk. pape) 1. Architecture—Prychological aspocts, 2. Architecture and 1. Tide, NA2540.663 2009 soci poxtg—deez — 2009u071 A catalogue ecard for thie book is available from che British Library. ‘This paper meets the requirements of ANST/NISO Z19.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). wo 8 765 4g oe also by paul goldberger The City Observed, New York: An Architectural Guide to Manhattan the Skyscraper On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-modern Age Houses of the Hamptons Manhattan Unfitrled (with Matteo Peticoli) The World Trade Ceater Remembered Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York Beyond the Dunes (with Jakke Rajs) to read Madame Bovary or decide to hear a performance of Bee- thoven's late quartets, bur you live your life within and around and beside dozens of other buildings, almost nonc of which you have chosen to be with. Some of them may be masterpieces and some of them may be the architectural equivalent of dime-store novels or elevator music. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about the meaning of literature without talking abour Danielle Steel, but can you grapple with the impact of architecture without looking at Main Street? Ttend to think not, which is why the pages that follow will deal to a great cxrent with the everyday experience of looking at buildings, which is, for most people, a major reason—sometim the only reason—that architecture matters. Masterpieces are no less important for this, and they will get plenty of attention here. Te is not wrong to say that the greatest buildings provide the greatest moments of architecrural experience. They certainly have for me. But I prefer to sec architecture notas a sequential story of masterworks, a saga beginning with the Pyramids and the Par- thenon and extending through Chartres and the Taj Mahal and the Duomo and the Laurentian Library and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and then on io the work of Louis Sullivan and Wright and Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but as a continuum of culcural expression. Architeceure “is the will of an epoch translated into spa to be, and sometimes it is the avceage ones that tell us che most. ” Mies said. Buildings tell us what we are and what we want There are surely some readers for whom archizecture macters ina more specific way than I have in mind here. For some, architec- xii Introduction ture matters because buildings arc our greatest consumers of energy (far more than cars), and if we do not reduce the amount of energy consumed in constructing and maintaining our buildings, we will be in far worse shape than if every MINI Cooper owner traded in his car for a Hummer. I could not agree more with the urgency of the green architecture movementand with the wisdom as well as the practicality of making sustainable buildings. One of the mast encouraging developments in the past decade is the extent to which the architectural profession has taken up the values of the environmental movement and made many of them its own. So I am in complete agreement with the move toward sustainable architecture, and I do not discuss it in this book only because my intention is to look at architecture from a broader and. less technical standpoint. But there can be no doubt that one of che ways architecture continues to matter is in how it uscs energy and that reducing the amount of energy consumed by buildings needs ta he one of the highest priorities of our time. By the same token, I am sure there are readers who feel that architecture marters because the building industry occupies a huge position. in our economy and that if we can make it more efficient, the entire economy will benefit. For others, archivecture matters because the technology of building is undergoing te- markable advances, allowing us to build all kinds of things that architects once could barely dream about. And there are surely readers who believe that architecture matters because people are in desperate need of housing and that architecture has the puten- tial to address this as well as so many other urgent social needs. Here again, Tam in agreement, and I do discuss the issue of the Introduction xiii social responsibility of architecture in a limited ‘way toward the end of chapter 1. But as with green architecture, the economies and technical aspects of building are not che focus of this book, however much I share a belief in their importance. This book does nor argue for a single theory of architecture, an all-encompassing worldview that can dictate form to the archi- tect and explain it to the test of us. 1 do not believe there is such a thing as a universal recipe for good architecture; even in apes with much more stylistic coherence than our own, there have always been a myriad of ways in which different architects have chosen to build. Tam excited by the best architecture of any style and. any periad, and although the focus of this book is almost exclusively an Western architecture, what I say about space and symbol and form—and ahout the relation of everyday buildings to special ones---has application to architcceure of all cultures, Architecrure takes very different forms in, different cultures, but the nature of our experience with such fundamental matters as proportion and scale and space and texture and materials and shapes and light is not as different as the appearance of the architecture itself may be. And it is the quest to understand these basic things thar interests me the most—far more, surely, chan any theory or dagma or cultural tradition that argues that there is a single acceptable way to build, . Anchitects, being artists, often see things differently, and they should: it probably helps to produce an important body of work if you believe that there is one true way. ‘Ihe blinders that theory xiv Introduction represents can be useful, maybe even essential, to artists in the making of art. Buel do not believe that they help the rest of us to appreciate and understand it. But if not theory, what? What determines whether, to use Mies’s phrase, the bricks are put together well? Why do some buildings lift the spirit and others depress it? Why are some buildings a joy and others painful? And why do some hardly register at all? Mf there are many routes to the kingdom of architectural heaven, it does not mean that there are not still guideposts along the way. Something has vo help us tell che good from the bad. Somc of thasc guideposts are purely aesthetic: much propertion, for cxample, is based on the purity of the so-called Golden Sec- tion, the roughly three-by-five rectangle whose ratio of height to width is particularly pleasing to the eye, neither toa bluntly squate nor 100 elongated. We can analyze this and other com- binations that make buildings pleasing as objects until we are blue in the face (and I will say something about such issues of visual petception in chapter 3}, but such analyses will take us only so far. Ultimately axchitecture, though it can reach great aesthetic heights, achieves its meaning from the balance between aesthetic and other concerns. It must be understood as a complex and aften contradictory set of conditions, in which art seeks to find some detente with che realitics of the world. Architecture is always a response co limits—physical constraints, financial oncs, or the demands of function. [fir is seen purely as art or purcly as a practical pursuit, it will never really be grasped. Tnusroduction xv Ta Art (Objects), Jeanette Winterson asks how we can know the difference between art to be admired and art to be ignored, “Years ago, when J was living very briefly with a stockbroker who had a good cellar,” she says, “I asked him how I could learn about wine. “Drink iz,” he said.” And so it is, Experience is not sufficient, but it is niccessary, ‘The only way to learn is to look, to look again, and then to look some more, If that does not guarantee connoisseurship in.are any more than sampling a lot of wine can rurn someone into a-wine expert, it is the only possible beginning, and ultimately the most urgent part of rhe long process of learning, This book is firmly on the side of experience. Between walking the streets and reading a work of architectural history, I will always choose walking and the power of real perception. Facts—whether stylistic characteris- tics, names of obscure pieccs of classical ornament, or the birth- dates of great architects—can always be found later in books. The sense of being ‘in architectural space—whar it feels like, how it hits you in the eye and swirls around in your gut, and, if you are very lucky, sends shivers up your spinc—cannot be understood except by being there. Everything has a feel to it. Not just masterpieces hut every- thing in the built world, The purpose of this book is to come ta ith how archivecture affects tis emotionally as well as intellectually. grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, This book is nor a work of architectural history or a guide to the styles or an architectural dictionary, though it contains elements of all three of these, Its most important message, I hope, is ro svt Tnernduction encourage you ta look, and to learn gradually how to trust your eye. Look for essences, not for superficial stylistic detail. Think about intentions, but do not be too forgiving on their behalf, for they have given birth to more bad architec.ure than good. As io. art, intentions are necessary, but they are only a beginning, not an end in themselves. How good intentions become serious ide! which, in turn, inspire the creation of built form that is capable of pleasing us or, better still, of moving us, is the subject of the rest of this book. Futroduetion xvi.