Western architecture

“ From the latest Baroque Western European architecture turned away two centuries ago; to the Baroque, in any revivalistic sense, it is hardly likely to return. Yet after the ever-increasing divergencies, which have been as characteristic of the mid century as convergence was of twentieth-century architecture down to the 1930s, will we—perhaps before another decade has passed—begin to sense the beginnings of a new synthesis?
Today, the problem must be posed in world terms. So far Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa have, on the whole, been learners and disciples of the West. ”

“ Firstly, that, though we are in the habit of considering it antiquated, it is in fact the architecture of the modern as distinguished from the ancient world—that, just as the architecture of the earlier half of the world’s history culminated in that of Greece, which must ever be viewed as its most perfect and most glorious representative, so did the indigenous architecture of the newer world reach its culminating point in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries among the nations of Western Europe—the depositaries of a new civilisation. ”

“ This fine sense of architecture is even more apparent in the United States (I, of course, only speak of the few towns I visited) than in Canada, for there are more buildings and it is a richer country. The sense of architecture may spring from that country, or it may be that the whole Continent has the instinct. As I am not competent to judge, I accuse the whole of the Western hemisphere of that virtue. ”

“ Most of the private houses in the various cantonments are simply hideous, and even the78 best of our public buildings, law courts, town halls, &c., are anything but adapted to the climate. Imitations of Classical, Italian, and Gothic architecture are plentiful everywhere, but few attempts have been made to adapt any of the features of Oriental architecture to our Western requirements. ”

“ Exactly in the ratio this barbarian element prevailed along the course of its westward development, architecture flourished in originality and beauty, the aggregated worth of which was always found at the point remotest from its source. All the western styles were derived from Roman art, but before the tenth century the originals had been forgotten, and a new type appeared wholly independent of the old one. ”

“ But skill came with experience, and with advancing civilization and a surer mastery of construction came a finer taste and greater elegance of design. Meanwhile military architecture developed a new science of building, and covered Europe with imposing castles, admirably constructed and often artistic in design as far as military exigencies would permit.
CHARACTER OF THE STYLE. The Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe (sometimes called the Round-Arched Gothic) was thus predominantly though not exclusively monastic. ”

“ The later eighteenth century turned inward in architecture towards the Rome and the Greece that were at the fountain-head of the Western European tradition; today we should perhaps be turning outward towards the new non-European world which is still in the mid twentieth century, in architecture as in so much else, the child of Europe. ”

“ MODERN ARCHITECTS OF THE FIRST GENERATION IN FRANCE: AUGUSTE PERRET AND TONY GARNIER No better name than ‘modern’ has yet been found for what has come to be the characteristic architecture of the twentieth century throughout the western world, well beyond its confines also in Japan, India, and Africa, and increasingly in most of the Communist countries. Alternative adjectives such as ‘rational’, ‘functional’, ‘international’, or ‘organic’ all have the disadvantage of being either vaguer or more tendentious. ”

“ In Eastern lands three great schools of architecture have grown up contemporaneously with the above phases of Western art; one under the influence of Mohammedan civilization, another in the Brahman and Buddhist architecture of India, and the third in China and Japan. The first of these is the richest and most important. Primarily inspired from Byzantine art, always stronger on the decorative than on the constructive side, it has given to the world the mosques and palaces of Northern Africa, Moorish Spain, Persia, Turkey, and India. ”

“ No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill.
In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. ”

“ I cannot refrain from again speaking of the effect that this original genius has had upon American architecture, especially in the West, when money and enterprise afforded him free scope. It is not too much to say that he created a new era, and the influence of his ideas is seen everywhere in the work of architects who have caught his spirit. ”

“ Moreover, while the West was more and more losing political control of Africa and Asia, its cultural influence on those continents did not necessarily decline, indeed as regards architecture it probably increased. ”

“ There will also be natural propriety in using an eastern light for bedrooms and libraries, a western light in winter for baths and winter apartments, and a northern light for picture galleries and other places in which a steady light is needed; for that quarter of the sky grows neither light nor dark with the course of the sun, but remains steady and unshifting all day long. ”

“ We unaccountably neglect the encouragement of the oriental architecture, with its elegant designs, elaborate detail, and durable material, for the nondescript compositions, incongruous mixture of colours, and inferior material of the public buildings and monuments we have spread all over the country. We seem to forget that what is suitable to the climate, conformable to the scenery, and acceptable to the tastes of the people of Europe, may be the reverse in each instance when introduced into this country without modification or adaptation to its circumstances. ”

“ Our architects are assuredly less trammelled by tradition than those of any older countries, and the architects of the West are even less trammelled than those of the East. Their characteristic buildings show this characteristic equally, whether they be good or bad. ”

“ May we not hope to see our native granite reposing in the ever-during strength of the Doric, or springing up in the grand and lofty Gothic, in forms which beauty and utility, the eye and the judgment, taste and devotion, shall unite to approve and to admire? But while we regard sacred and civil architecture as highly important, let us not forget that other branch, so essential to personal comfort and happiness,—domestic architecture or common house-building. ”

“ To the brief but brilliant interregnum lasting from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the year 1825 we are indebted for some excellent domestic architecture. The end of the ancient régime in America, at least up to the war with Great Britain in 1812, was marked by a healthy and material progress which seems to have encouraged domestic architecture before everything. ”

“ It is a matter well known that in Northern Germany, Belgium, Holland, and in England red brick buildings with stone and terra-cotta dressings and sculptured work were erected as manor houses, palaces, and every kind of public building, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, most of which were fine examples, not only of architecture, but of exterior colouring. ”

“ They at least are not ashamed of their construction, or, at any rate, they are not allowed to smother it in beauty at thirty shillings a foot. We shall have no more architecture in Europe till architects understand that all these tawdry excrescences have got to be simplified away, till they make up their minds to express themselves in the materials of the age—steel, concrete, and glass—and to create in these admirable media vast, simple, and significant forms. ”

“ But the peculiar characteristics of the architecture of the West did not stop short with these simple types. It advanced, carrying in its advance its own significant character, until it became mingled with the architecture propagated from Rome, as the Christian community which worshipped within the buildings became absorbed in the hierarchy. ”

“ Have we any pretensions to an architectural system which all of us recognise as belonging to our age and country, the child of its peculiar civilization, the offspring of our climate and soil, and of the special tastes inspired by our love of nature? Or have we forms and models that have sprung from our institutions, our own domestic and insular predilections? ”

“ But if we go further, and by reason of accumulated affluence erect the entire structure of the new Colonial house in stone—columns, cornices, window and door casings, etc., strange to say we lose an indefinable charm—a certain warmth and personality with which American history has invested wood. Besides, the fashion and style of Renaissance motive and detail is as suitable to wood as it is to stone ”

“ But these papers have also borne witness that there are among the emancipated practitioners of architecture in the West men who have shown that they can use their liberty wisely, and whose work can be hailed as among the hopeful beginnings of a national architecture. ”

“ The revolution which has gone all over the country since the Exposition of 1876 in house-furnishing and decoration is quite as apparent in the West as in the East. The West has not suffered more than the East from eccentricities of architecture in the past twenty years. Violations of good taste are pretty well distributed, but of new houses the proportion of handsome, solid, good structures is as large in the West as in the East, and in the cities I think the West has the advantage in variety. ”

“ Each is a type of different architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a "cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and the styles cover all known methods of building—Gothic, Elizabethan, Tudor, Swiss, Flemish, French, with every sort of ancient house in Britain or Continental Europe, imitated and improved upon, and in some cases widely varying systems being condensed together. ”

“ There are no flying buttresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, such as form the charm of French and English architecture; but instead of this, the lines of parti-coloured marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of foliage, the mosaics and the frescoes which meet the eye in every direction, satisfy our sense of variety, producing most agreeable combinations of blending hues and harmoniously connected forms. The chief fault which offends against our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal lines, both in the 46 construction of the façade, and also in the internal decoration. ”

“ And thus the style of building, resulting from the various experiences of growth in civilization, becomes historical, apt, suggestive, and so beautiful. The Northern slopes his roof to a lofty point, and then crowns it with a spire, that it may shake off lustily the superincumbent snow, or give easy flow to the waters, and sharp resistance to the winds of an inclement climate. The Egyptian strengthened the base of his edifice, and scientifically leaned its walls inwards, for double security against earthquake or inundation. ”

“ The influence of external nature on the imagination--the creative faculty in man--is obvious and remarkable. It reveals itself in all the productions of man--his architecture, his sculpture, his painting, and his poetry. Oriental architecture is characterized by the boldness and massiveness of all its parts, and the monotonous uniformity of all its features. This is but the expression, in a material form, of that shadowy feeling of infinity, and unity, and immobility which an unbroken continent of vast deserts and continuous lofty mountain chains would naturally inspire. ”

“ Nothing can better illustrate the immense strides made in the West during the eleventh century than the great development of these establishments, and no part of the progress then made had greater influence on Architecture. ”

“ And while this remark may seem to ignore architecture as such, i.e. the fine art of beautiful building, it expresses a fundamental principle; for to build a house to live in, shaped for the needs of civilized human life, is to secure the primary condition of good architectural effect. And no domestic architecture in Europe has had more genuine charm for the eye than that of England of the Elizabethan time in its integrity, as it may be seen, for instance, in the greater parts of Haddon Hall; St. Johns, Warwick; Hambleton Old Hall, Rutland; North Mymms, Hertfordshire, and others. [2] ”

“ In fact, considering architecture as a fine art, as the solid record of the power, genius, and thought of a people, we may say that when a nation or a race has reached the height of its civilization, according to its own self-created type, its indigenous, home-bred, time-matured culture, and then by its buildings gives expression to its principles and its feelings, with all the impressiveness which it commands, what it produces cannot fail to be beautiful in connection with these manifestations. ”

“ The more important structures in the Southern and Dutch colonies were of brick imported from Europe. Wood was, however, the material most commonly employed, especially in New England, and its use determined in large measure the form and style of the colonial architecture. There was little or no striving for architectural elegance until well into the eighteenth century, when Wren’s influence asserted itself in a modest way in the Middle and Southern colonies. ”