Royal Institute of British Architects

“ The leading architectural society is the Royal Institute of British Architects, founded in 1834, incorporated in 1837, and granted new charters in 1887 and 1908. It appoints examining professional boards and publishes Transactions (1836; 1879, &c.) and Proceedings (1879, &c.) . There are also the Associations of Birmingham (1873) , Edinburgh (1850) , Exeter (1843) , Glasgow (1868) , Leeds (1876) , Leicestershire (1855) , Liverpool (1848) , Manchester (1875) , Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the societies of Manchester (1865) and Oxford (1837) . ”

“ I suppose there is no man who, permitted to address, for the first time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel himself abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be heard by them, even if he attempted only to describe what had come under his personal observation, much more if on the occasion he thought it would be expected of him to touch upon any of the general principles of the art of architecture before its principal English masters. ”

“ There is little to remark further than that the members of it, having been but few during earlier periods, when the amount of architectural building was relatively small, segregation and association of them could scarcely occur. Recently, however, there has been formed an Institute of Architects, and the body of men devoted to the art is tending more and more to make itself definite by imposing tests of qualification. ”

“ April 20, 1982 marks the 125th Anniversary of the American Institute of Architects. With a spirit of appreciation, the American people honor and congratulate the Institute for its many accomplishments.
American architects have historically expressed through their work the richness of our heritage and the vitality of our national spirit. They have combined advances in building technology with design innovation to give exciting new forms to our cities. ”

“ There is also the school in London founded by the younger professional body of 98architects, but so far these schools have not had time to influence current architecture to the extent that the American ones have done. The mass of practising English architects are still office-trained men with the specialised and sometimes narrow outlook on their art, which they have gained from the master under whom they served their apprenticeship. The result is often charming individual work, especially in domestic building where the problems to be faced are not of so generalised a character. ”

“ Is it proposed to build a church, a public institution, or a dwelling-house? If you have the money you shall have one as well built as human hands can accomplish. But you must name your style—Greek, Palladian, Norman, Early English, Tudor, Jacobean, or Georgian—your architect will carry out a masterpiece in any one of them; but if you say Victorian, or the style of the day, he will give you François Ier to-day, Queen Anne to-morrow, and Pericles the day after. Buildings grow apace, and they are soundly and tastefully constructed, but British architecture is dead. ”

“ If the public really desired great and impressive works of architecture they would have them; but neither the British public nor its mouthpiece the government, care anything about it. Their highest ambition is to get convenient and economical buildings. And as to the theory of the new school, that we should throw overboard all precedent in architectural detail, that is intellectually impossible. We are not made so that we can invent everything de novo, or escape the effect on our minds of what has preceded us; the attempt can only lead to baldness or eccentricity. ”

“ To remove the squalor and damage consequent upon such occupancy, and to restore and preserve the colonial architecture of the once splendid mansion, the Institute expended three thousand dollars, resulting in handsome and artistic headquarters, in all respects worthy of such an organization.
It may not be generally known that prior to 1850, the profession of architecture was not in good repute in America; that carpenters and contractors were much more highly esteemed than architects, the former, in contrast to the latter, being classified as “practical persons.” ”

“ The building artisans, in fact, were collectively to take the place of the architect and the form of the building to be evolved by a natural process of growth. This was a favourite idea also with William Morris, who insisted that medieval art—the only art which he recognized as of any value (Greek, Roman and Renaissance being alike contemptible in his eyes) —was essentially an art of the people, and that in fact it was the modern architects who stood in the way of our having a genuine architecture of the 19th century. ”

“ Such a regenerating of architecture is going on amongst us: comparatively more money is now laid out on buildings than at any preceding period for the last hundred years: our architects are becoming more scientific and more accomplished: the profession is occupying a higher rank than it has lately done ”

“ None the less architecture is not more largely in the hands of the engineers today than it was earlier despite many prognoses, both pessimistic and optimistic, that the engineers are, or should be, taking over. Moreover the architectural quality, as distinguished from the technical ingenuity, of the works of the great engineers is often as notable as is that of those buildings by certain architects in which engineering principles are dominant such as Eero Saarinen’s Chantilly airport (Plate 190B) . ”

“ The responsibilities of architects are greater than they have ever before been; the growing demand of the times calls for intelligent studies in all that relates to architecture, whether it be in the realm of æsthetics, in sciences that relate to construction, in the nature and properties of the materials used, in the atmosphere that surrounds us, or in the availability of the thousand-and-one useful and ingenious inventions that tend to promote the convenience and completeness of structures. ”

“ If beauty in architecture had been encouraged during the last two centuries, instead of being frowned down, we should still have the class of men who were competent. Of course, as before remarked, it would be impossible, in the present nature of things, to re-introduce such a style of contract as that quoted; but one thing we can do,—we can try to arrive at some of the principles of design that influenced the old workmen. There is no code of rules, and to try to design with their pencils will be to many architects of the present day as hopeless a task as to write with Shakespeare’s pen ”

“ This chapter has summarized what was probably the greatest single innovation in nineteenth-century architecture, the rise of a new type of building to a position of prestige and of achievement comparable to that of churches and palaces in earlier periods. The same cannot be said of domestic architecture. The house was hardly a nineteenth-century invention like the office building. It was, however, modified almost beyond recognition as the century progressed, at the hands of several generations of creative architects. ”

“ His advice to persons contemplating building, that they should employ an architect and should not be constantly interfering with him, is undoubtedly sound: and one reason advanced for employing an architect, namely, that “the several Master-workmen may receive instructions by way of Draughts, Models, Frames, etc.,” is interesting as showing that architects were now accustomed to provide more minute details than in the time of Elizabeth and James. ”

“ Architects will then be no longer tempted to startle and amaze by astounding novelties, but will seek to please by harmonies that give the eye repose. And it will be felt that the architect is not a builder up only, but a beautifier, of his materials, of their arrangement, and of their uses. ”

“ This student-system must in time create a body of men, well educated, enthusiastic, and bound together by an esprit de corps hitherto almost unknown among the great body of practising architects. The dictum passed by such a body upon the art and science of building will be received with respect by the laymen who employ them, and American architecture, in its better phases, will receive an impetus and a nervous strength in construction and composition which at present we find exemplified only in the scattered works of a few highly-trained practitioners. ”

“ I say the general quality, for, of course, we have not been entirely without our modern architects, who as artists have upheld our ancient faculty of building beautifully, but unfortunately such artists have been the exception. No one who walks through the City of London, or along Oxford Street or New Regent Street, could maintain that the mass of our modern town buildings compares with the few old ones like Somerset House, or such of Nash’s plaster palaces as still remain to serve as a standard. ”

“ I have also to remind you that architecture cannot be brought into vigorous life again, so long as architects insist on using old forms for beauty that are inseparable from a construction that has been abandoned; so long as this practice persists, so long will architecture be a kind of potted art; to be vigorous it must learn how to take the materials, and construction that would be ordinarily used in buildings for purely practical purposes, and give to these materials and this construction forms that will excite the proper emotions. ”

“ His chief architect was a young man named Westminster, whose work he had picked out in the architecture room of the Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him he associated from time to time a number of fellow professionals, stonemasons, sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes, metal workers, wood carvers, furniture designers, ceramic specialists, landscape gardeners, and the man who designs the arrangement and ventilation of the various new houses in the London Zoological Gardens. ”

“ Of course, unless an architect is also partly an artist he cannot be successful; no amount of learning can compensate for this. The two best expositors we ever had of Gothic architecture, Rickman and Britton, were indifferent architects. Perhaps they may be said to have known more than all who went before them or followed after; and both of them were endowed with a thorough love for their profession. There may be something to urge that they were not brought up to it, one being in a mercantile office in Liverpool, and the other a wine-bottler in London. ”

“ No man builds to himself alone. His building is there, if in London, for some ninety years or more. It may even descend to our great-great-grandchildren to show them what sort of animals we were. The unveiling of a great building when the scaffold first comes down should be an important event, much more so than the unveiling of the ordinary statue.
For instance, very shortly Sir Edwin Lutyens’ great building in Finsbury-circus and Moorgate for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company will be exposed to view. Here is the first great modern block of offices being built by one of our leading architects. ”

“ But the establishment of architectural schools at the Boston Institute of Technology, at Columbia College, and at Champagne, Illinois, with well-trained and enthusiastic professors at the head of each, and carefully-selected corps of assistants, is already doing much toward an improvement in students themselves, and in raising the standard of American architecture as a profession in the eyes of society. ”

“ There are, however, two influences which may have a definite effect on the architecture of the near future. One of these is the possible greater rapprochement between architecture and engineering, of which there are already some signs to be seen; architects will learn more of the kind of structural problems which are now almost the exclusive province of the engineer, and there will be a demand that engineering works shall be treated, as they well may be, with some of the refinement and expression of architecture. ”

“ Even if Science must emerge from its Cyclopean forges and its potent laboratories in the shape of a gigantic chimney, why should not Art fly up to it, and bestow on it elegance of proportions and some richness of details?
And so I close my Address to you, by expressing a sincere conviction that the prospects of Architecture are most promising, but that they will greatly increase in proportion as we can promote among all classes reverence for the sacred, and taste for the beautiful. ”

“ In 1850 the revival and expansion of semi-classic architecture wrought in brick would have been impossible; in 1870 the building world was ripe for the change. The architects themselves, after receiving their early education under the leaders of the stucco and plaster school of the later Georgian reigns, had had their ideas purified and refined by the art-teachings of the Victorian Gothicists. The result was a spontaneous movement to develop a new system of construction, with lintelled openings and square fenestration,—Queen Anne modified and elevated by mediæval teachings and traditions. ”

“ To their minds human workmanship and the power of wealth are too feeble for the erection of a structure so enduring and magnificent. Indeed, great architects can hardly conceive the skill that balanced those halls and gardens and towers one against the other with perfect symmetry, or the patience that worked out each interlaced design without error in either the art or the chiseling. ”

“ In fact, looking at our great public buildings of the day, will not a future age keep its judgment equally balanced on the question, whether we had decided between the classical style of the Treasury, or the mediaeval of the national palace, as best recording our tastes and feeling?
If this be so, must we not say, that looking at the past which has given us rules, and at the present which gives us data, our conclusion for the future of Architecture is not favourable, so far as public building is concerned? ”