JCTV + logomachia
Dictionary of bits and pieces
This dictionary needs no sorting order. It is a collection of definitions, quotes and texts quite randomly put together with a focus on architecture and philosophy. Use "Ctrl F" to find specific words or phrases
Describing cities is a method of practicingphilosophy.
György Konrád, Kerti Mulatság, (1985)
I hear the ruin of all space
James Joyce,Ulysses, (1922)
A park in London: lots of people, none of them familiar, none of them too near to each other, and yet none of them too far away either. Everyone in the mild light of late summer, people lying down, people standing up, walking; everyone alive under a warm heaven, noone shouts, noone argues, everyone comes and goes freely, alone, together, with whomever they like, and however long a person stays, noone is hampered in their freedom by that person, or sad. It is as if people were allowed to enter paradise without having to stay and as if no sin had ever caused them to be thrown out.
Elias Canetti (Translated from a dutch edition of his aphorisms called Vliegenpijn)
The "problem of imitation" has, despite its banality, never left us: the whispering is insistent. Let's put the case again: there is nothing wrong with imitation.... On the contrary: it is a good exercise! The word exercise itself says enough. To imitate the way a person does something is to adopt and experiment with a more or less methodical critique from a particular perspective. That kind of imitation is never a problem, even if it leads to results similar to the ones arrived at by the person imitated. Where imitation becomes tiresome, is where this critique is happily skipped and the form arrived at is "thoughtless" , not merely autonomous, but in a peculiar way "autistic".
JCTV, 2004
History exists where there is a price to be paid
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1988, p. 113
Elementarised Architecture: A system of tension in free space. Changing space into town-planning. No groundwork, no wall. Breaking loose from the earth, doing away with the static axis. By creating new possibilities of living. A new society is created.
Friedrich Kiesler, 1927
"I think of school as an environment of spaces where it is good to learn. School began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was a teacher, discussing his realization with a few who did not know they were students...the existence-will of school was there even before the circumstances of a man under a tree. That is why it is good for the mind to go back to the beginning, because the beginning of any established activity is its most wonderful moment."
Louis Kahn, where?
Palazzo Rucellai is the engraving of a (mathematical and therefore universal) order onto an otherwise useless and referenceless map
cf. Rykwert, Alberti Leonis Baptiste Alberti, AD Profiles 21, ed. J. Rykwert It is very necessary in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building. To build, -literally to confirm,- is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church building, ship building, and coach building (...) but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects; and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage commodious, or a ship swift. I do not, of course, mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture); but in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, from extending principles which belong altogether to building, into the sphere of architecture proper. Let us therefore, at once confine the name to that art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of its working, the necessities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery supported on projected masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting masses be carved beneath into round courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or colour of being architectural; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on good building; but it is perfectly easy, and very necessary, to keep the ideas distinct, and to understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use. J. Ruskin, Seven Lamps It takes a man to understand by universals, and to collect out of the multiplicity of sense-impressions a unity arrived at by a process of reason Plato, Phaedrus Hamilton transl. It is characteristic of Human Reason to seek unity in multiplicity Plato, Phaedrus Hutcheson Transl. style assumes and informs the contrast between form and content, it is the surface of an underlying structure Roland Barthes, where? ..an art which as the chief of those arts, which are emphatically called the 'peaceful arts' is highly calculated to lead the human mind, (which by its nature must be active on something,) from war and bloodshed, to the contemplation of what will afford unlimited, pleasing and useful occupation for the mind, nor, it seems to me, can we sufficiently despise those, who, while speaking of the late improvements in London, declared architecture an art only calculated to fan the vanity of the world. I cannot help thinking, that the encouragement of an art, of so elegant and fundamental a nature, and so full of endless variety, may be productive of the greatest benefit of society, it may be laying the corner-stone for a multitude of other arts of a peaceful nature, and perhaps, if I may allude to Scripture in a secular work, for the commencement of that period when they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; when the nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah II,4.) and they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat fruit of them; they shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not plant and another eat. (Isaiah, LXV, 21,22). Peter Legh (1831) pp. ix-x Concerning this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father 1 Kings 6:12, King James Version 1 But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house.2 He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon; the length thereof was an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits, upon four rows of cedar pillars, with cedar beams upon the pillars.
3 And it was covered with cedar above upon the beams, that lay on forty five pillars, fifteen in a row.
4 And there were windows in three rows, and light was against light in three ranks. 5 And all the doors and posts were square, with the windows: and light was against light in three ranks. 6 And he made a porch of pillars; the length thereof was fifty cubits, and the breadth thereof thirty cubits: and the porch was before them: and the other pillars and the thick beam were before them. 7 Then he made a porch for the throne where he might judge, even the porch of judgment: and it was covered with cedar from one side of the floor to the other. 8 And his house where he dwelt had another court within the porch, which was of the like work. Solomon made also an house for Pharaoh's daughter, whom he had taken to wife, like unto this porch. 9 All these were of costly stones, according to the measures of hewed stones, sawed with saws, within and without, even from the foundation unto the coping, and so on the outside toward the great court. 10 And the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. 11 And above were costly stones, after the measures of hewed stones, and cedars. 12 And the great court round about was with three rows of hewed stones, and a row of cedar beams, both for the inner court of the house of the LORD, and for the porch of the house. 13 And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. 14 He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work. 15 For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about. 16 And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits: 17 And nets of checker work, and wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters which were upon the top of the pillars; seven for the one chapiter, and seven for the other chapiter. 18 And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates: and so did he for the other chapiter. 19 And the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in the porch, four cubits. 20 And the chapiters upon the two pillars had pomegranates also above, over against the belly which was by the network: and the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other chapiter. 21 And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz. 22 And upon the top of the pillars was lily work: so was the work of the pillars finished. 23 And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 24 And under the brim of it round about there were knops compassing it, ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about: the knops were cast in two rows, when it was cast. 25 It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward. 26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths. 27 And he made ten bases of brass; four cubits was the length of one base, and four cubits the breadth thereof, and three cubits the height of it. 28 And the work of the bases was on this manner: they had borders, and the borders were between the ledges: 29 And on the borders that were between the ledges were lions, oxen, and cherubims: and upon the ledges there was a base above: and beneath the lions and oxen were certain additions made of thin work. 30 And every base had four brasen wheels, and plates of brass: and the four corners thereof had undersetters: under the laver were undersetters molten, at the side of every addition. 31 And the mouth of it within the chapiter and above was a cubit: but the mouth thereof was round after the work of the base, a cubit and an half: and also upon the mouth of it were gravings with their borders, foursquare, not round. 32 And under the borders were four wheels; and the axletrees of the wheels were joined to the base: and the height of a wheel was a cubit and half a cubit. 33 And the work of the wheels was like the work of a chariot wheel: their axletrees, and their naves, and their felloes, and their spokes, were all molten. 34 And there were four undersetters to the four corners of one base: and the undersetters were of the very base itself. 35 And in the top of the base was there a round compass of half a cubit high: and on the top of the base the ledges thereof and the borders thereof were of the same. 36 For on the plates of the ledges thereof, and on the borders thereof, he graved cherubims, lions, and palm trees, according to the proportion of every one, and additions round about. 37 After this manner he made the ten bases: all of them had one casting, one measure, and one size. 38 Then made he ten lavers of brass: one laver contained forty baths: and every laver was four cubits: and upon every one of the ten bases one laver. 39 And he put five bases on the right side of the house, and five on the left side of the house: and he set the sea on the right side of the house eastward over against the south. 40 And Hiram made the lavers, and the shovels, and the basons. So Hiram made an end of doing all the work that he made king Solomon for the house of the LORD: 41 The two pillars, and the two bowls of the chapiters that were on the top of the two pillars; and the two networks, to cover the two bowls of the chapiters which were upon the top of the pillars; 42 And four hundred pomegranates for the two networks, even two rows of pomegranates for one network, to cover the two bowls of the chapiters that were upon the pillars; 43 And the ten bases, and ten lavers on the bases; 44 And one sea, and twelve oxen under the sea; 45 And the pots, and the shovels, and the basons: and all these vessels, which Hiram made to king Solomon for the house of the LORD, were of bright brass. 46 In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan. 47 And Solomon left all the vessels unweighed, because they were exceeding many: neither was the weight of the brass found out. 48 And Solomon made all the vessels that pertained unto the house of the LORD: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, whereupon the shewbread was, 49 And the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five on the left, before the oracle, with the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs of gold, 50 And the bowls, and the snuffers, and the basons, and the spoons, and the censers of pure gold; and the hinges of gold, both for the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the house, to wit, of the temple. 51 So was ended all the work that king Solomon made for the house of the LORD. And Solomon brought in the things which David his father had dedicated; even the silver, and the gold, and the vessels, did he put among the treasures of the house of the LORD. 1 Kings 7, King James Version Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer 1 Samuel 7:12 KJV 1 Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. 2 And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign. 3 Now these are the things wherein Solomon was instructed for the building of the house of God. The length by cubits after the first measure was threescore cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits. 4 And the porch that was in the front of the house, the length of it was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the height was an hundred and twenty: and he overlaid it within with pure gold. 5 And the greater house he cieled with fir tree, which he overlaid with fine gold, and set thereon palm trees and chains. 6 And he garnished the house with precious stones for beauty: and the gold was gold of Parvaim. 7 He overlaid also the house, the beams, the posts, and the walls thereof, and the doors thereof, with gold; and graved cherubims on the walls. 8 And he made the most holy house, the length whereof was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits: and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to six hundred talents. 9 And the weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold. And he overlaid the upper chambers with gold. 10 And in the most holy house he made two cherubims of image work, and overlaid them with gold. 11 And the wings of the cherubims were twenty cubits long: one wing of the one cherub was five cubits, reaching to the wall of the house: and the other wing was likewise five cubits, reaching to the wing of the other cherub. 12 And one wing of the other cherub was five cubits, reaching to the wall of the house: and the other wing was five cubits also, joining to the wing of the other cherub. 13 The wings of these cherubims spread themselves forth twenty cubits: and they stood on their feet, and their faces were inward. 14 And he made the vail of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubims thereon. 15 Also he made before the house two pillars of thirty and five cubits high, and the chapiter that was on the top of each of them was five cubits. 16 And he made chains, as in the oracle, and put them on the heads of the pillars; and made an hundred pomegranates, and put them on the chains. 17 And he reared up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand, and the other on the left; and called the name of that on the right hand Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz. 2 Chronicles 3, KJVThe beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!
2 Samuel 1:19 KJV < /P>
The urge to ornament oneself and everything within reach is the ancestor of pictorial art. It is the Baby talk of painting Adolf Loos, Ornament und Verbrechen, 1908 (1912) quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)The man of our own times who smudges erotic symbols on walls is either a criminal or a degenerate. It is clear that this violent impulse might seize one or two unbalanced individuals in even the most advanced cultures, but as a rule one can rank the cultures of different peoples by the extent to which their lavatory walls have been drawn upon Adolf Loos, Ornament und Verbrechen, 1908 (1912) quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects Adolf Loos, Ornament und Verbrechen, 1908 (1912) quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
...convenience, adaptation to the purpose, duration, and the other cardinal properties (...) are to be found in all the works of the Almighty Alfred Bartholomew, Specifications, 1839
I hope to be able to prove satisfactorily to most candid and inquiring minds, THAT PURE TASTE IN ARCHITECTURE HAS IN PAST AGES BEEN PURELY STRUCTURAL; and that a departure from this wisdom is the true cause of the TASTE (or to speak more properly the WANT OF TASTE) in modern architecture being so VARIABLE, SO CAPRICIOUS, SO MUCH QUARRELLED ABOUT, SO MUCH QUESTIONED, AND SO SHORT-LIVED Alfred Bartholomew, Specifications, 1839
I will go lose myself, and wander up and down to view the city Antipholus of Syracuse in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
...the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. Aristotle, Poetics
I (...) know of no greater absurdity than that absurdity which characterizes almost all metaphysical systems: that of explaining evil as something negative. For evil is precisely that which is positive, that which makes itself palpable; and good, on the other hand, i.e. all happiness and all gratification, is that which is negative, the mere abolition of a desire and extinction of a pain. Arthur Schopenhauer, Paralipomene
The Renaissance in Italy involved only a reform in the system of ornament Auguste Choisy, quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
Qui ne sait pas peupler sa solitude, ne sait pas non plus être seul dans une foule affairée. (A man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of being alone in a crowd. Baudelaire, Les Foules (Crowds) in Little prose poems.
We ought not to imagine, because an inanimate object may be useful as well as a man, that therefore it ought also, according to this system, to merit the appellation of virtuous David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Evil only upsets people now and then, but the visible signs of evil hurt them from morning until night. Diderot, Rameau's Nephew The reign of Nature is quietly coming in, and that of my trinity, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail: truth, which is the father, begets goodness which is the son, whence proceeds the beautiful which is the holy ghost Diderot, Rameau's Nephew Taste , he says..... er, taste is a thing..... Diderot, Rameau's Nephew. By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. Ecclesiastes 10:18, King James Version ...if it be the mind that sees, -the mind that is pleased with a fine building, or displeased with the reverse, -how can it be pleased or displeased with any qualities but mental ones? Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 ...suppose an intelligent person, well acquainted from history with the comparative characters of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Medieval clerics, Arabs, and Hindoos, but having never seen any of their architecture, would he have any difficulty in identifying the productions of each? Well our present style, being more national, is more full of character than any of these. More distinctly than the Egyptian piles speak of tyranny, slavery, and priestcraft;- more fully than the Greek express intellect, polish, and refinement;- more loudly than the Roman proclaim ambition and general energy;- more truly than the Gothic embody a religion, or rather a romantic devotion;- more than all, does every form and feature of the modern English style express fickleness, low cunning, hollow affectation, simulation, servility, and thoughtflying hurry. What! are these then our national characters? No; but they are the characters of the many, in every nation; and we are as yet the only nation that have a style of the many. I appeal to all who have ever returned to our shores, after a long absence, to say whether they could shut their eyes to the hateful expression that met them in every building whether they could at first walk our streets without being disgusted, and, if of a sensitive temperament, almost sickened, by the intensely marked character of the architecture Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 ...where a mere constructor would have made two things of the same kind equal, because convenience and stability afforded no motive for making them unequal, this true architect [Palladio] somewhat exaggerates one, and reduces the other to the least dimensions that its use will allow, in order to carry out the beautiful (because natural) principles of variety, subordination and contrast. Or again, where an ordinary builder would have made certain divisions in the height or breadth of a building equal, or varying according to no definite law, simply because, in the first idea which occurred to him, the dimensions suggested by convenience happened to be equal or irregular, this artist-builder by consideration, and carefully distinguishing between what convenience required, and what it suggested- would contrive, without sacrificing a particle of convenience, so to adjust these dimensions as to make them exhibit a studied variety, a contrast, a law of variation, a gradation, a progression a proportion, a fanciful idea, a quaint trifle if you will. light as air in itself, but weighty and valuable as an indication of mind, of thought, of unnecessary design, of care bestowed on the spectator, and therefore pleasing; or in other words, adding to the beauty of the building. Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 ..in architecture, or at least in all its grander forms, varied colouring should have as little place as it has in the elephant, the oak or the mountain-chain Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 A building devoid of architecture displeases all who see it, (...) because they see and feel that it benefits its owner at their expense. Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Architecture, the latter writes, is the art of well building; in other words, of giving to a building all the perfection of which it is capable. This differs in no respect from another definition lately put forth, `the art of the beautiful in building;' for those who have undertaken to investigate the abstract nature of beauty, appear not to have arrived at any more definite conclusion than that it consists in perfection of any kind; so that, whether we speak of the beauties of a building, or its perfections, we mean the same thing. The term beauty is often restricted, in architecture, to those merits of a building which are not necessary to its use, or its mechanical perfection; and hence the classification of the aims of architecture under three heads- Fitness, Stability, and Beauty. Nothing can be called architecture which does not aim professedly at all these three objects...if there be any structure which professes to embody only two of these requirements (no matter which two), that is not architecture at all Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 consists in the discovery and practice of principles previously unknown. (...) Every principle in Art (unlike one in science) has to be discovered twice; first, by the artist of genius who introduces it into the practice of his art, but would be quite unable to state or explain it in words; and secondly, by the critic who translates it into verbal language, and thereby makes it part of the theory of art. Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 How can tangible objects affect [the mind] except by retaining the impress of mind...It is not the building we condemn but the mind that appears in it, -not the design but the spirit that presided over it, and stamped its own character thereon Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 If, as all admit, it is the mind alone, that sees, tastes, feels, likes and dislikes objects of art or taste, are not these self-preservative antipathies of the mind to be respected, as well as those of the body? does not this become a matter not of refinement and luxury, but of interest and DUTY? Are not ugly objects to be withdrawn as inflicting mental injuries, just the same as a nuisance, a noise, or a stench, which is known to be injurious to the body, because unpleasant? (...) Habit counteracts and renders us insensible to the unpleasantness, but not the injury. Who then shall dare to guess the difference in mental health, between a people living surrounded and immersed in objects of bad taste, or in objects of good taste, between a people whose works are all utilitarian, and one whose works are all artistic. These extreme cases, remember are not imaginary. History has afforded examples of both Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 It was Goethe, I believe, who called Gothic architecture a petrified religion. I cannot but regard the perfection of domestic architecture as an embodied courtesy Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850
nature will not suffer polychromy in her Doric works Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 no man or set of men [can] build unarchitecturally or without a style, -but neither can they avoid stamping their mind thereon, and leaving the indelible impress of the characters of the styleformers; i.e. not always the designers, but the majority or most influential part of those who have affected the style, by example, by infection, contagion, or mere proximity Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Nothing is beautiful which is without motive Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Some nations have copied columns from trees, and some from men, but neither of these are imitating nature; on the contrary, they are most unnatural, since nature has not made either a tree or a man to serve the purpose of a column. Are there, then, no columns in nature? Certainly there are. The limbs of all animals are columns according to the above definition, the surface against which they press being the ground. The human arm uplifted to support a weight is a column; and when pushing horizontally against a wall, it is a horizontal column or strut. Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 The difference between copying natural objects and imitating nature, lies in the introduction, in the latter case, of a principle of generalisation Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 The first use of architecture is: as a courtesy due from every one who builds to humanity, on whose ground and in whose sight he builds; secondly, as a further refinement of this courtesy into positive beauty, by attention to whatever may please the mind; and preference of what may please its higher faculties, before that which may please the lower, when they are incompatible (the justice of this preference constituting the difference between right and wrong in art, commonly called good and bad taste); thirdly, as a mode of conveying to the mind definite emotions, suited to, and even indicative of, the character and general destination of the work; lastly, as a means not only of affecting, but of exalting or improving. The architecture which attains only the first of these objects is no more than a polite art; when it reaches the second , it becomes an ornamental art; by attaining the third, it gains a title to be considered a fine, that is an expressive art; in those very few of its productions in which the last purpose has been accomplished, does it deserve to be called a high, a poetic art. As the first, its aim is to conciliate; as the second, to please; as the third, to touch; and as the last, to TEACH Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 The Gothic, throughout its career, nobly imitated nature in one particular, which the classic system never attempted. In the organisms of Nature, and those of the Gothic system (but of no other), do we find a most rigid economy of material, accompanied by no economy at all of workmanship,- often none of manual labour, but never any of mental labour. The most lavish expenditure of labour (or at least of thought) seems to have been considered no waste, if effecting the smallest saving of material; and the whole decorative system consisted in removing superfluous matter not conducive to strength Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 The name Architecture must apply (...) to those buildings which conform to all the rules of a systemised etiquette Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Though age affords no reason whatever for the adoption of any thing, it gives every reason for its examination and study Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Two widely different arts at present bear the name ARCHITECTURE... The more common of them may be defined as the art of clothing or masking buildings, of whatever class, with scenic representations of the features of a superior class, erected in some past age. The merit of these works is of course to be estimated by the fidelity with which they adhere to the peculiar marks of the period chosen, and avoid those belonging to any other period or country. This art has now arrived at great perfection, in consequence of the many fine archaeological works in which specimens of the building styles of various ages and nations are delineated. Indeed, few things can be easier than this is now rendered by such engravings; in the absence of which, of course, verbal directions on this art would be useless, and whose presence renders them needless. With this art, therefore, the present little work has no concern Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 whence the inherent ugliness of buildings, which it is the first object of `architecture proper' to correct? As there seems nothing analogous to it in other useful arts, it must arise from some evil peculiar to the nature of building, as distinguished from agriculture, gardening, furniture, pottery & c. [...] is not an unarchitectural building ugly simply because it looks selfish? It will be observed that the productions of other arts have not this inherent defect: they are goods to their owners without being defects to anyone. But a great building is, in certain respects, a necessary evil: it shuts out from us air and light, and the view of beauteous nature; it encumbers a portion of the earth's surface, and encloses a portion of the free atmosphere. It has no right to do so, without making or attempting what compensation it may for these injuries Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Why, are not convenience and stability enough to constitute a fine building? -in other words, Whence the necessity for architecture proper? Observe, it will be no answer to say, that it is man's nature not to be satisfied with the supply of necessities, but to seek for luxury, and to admire the beautiful. This will not do, because it is generally admitted that in all other arts, at least all other useful arts, and in all objects of use, whether natural or artificial (buildings alone excepted), the appearance of design, the correct adaptation of means to an end, seems in itself to constitute beauty, and even a beauty of the highest kind; so that those who have undertaken to investigate the laws of taste in general, as applicable to all the arts, have commonly ended by referring them all to this principle; in fact denying that beauty can ultimately be distinguished from utility. Thus they say, that a piece of furniture, or an utensil, appears well-formed, or well-proportioned, whenever its form or these proportions are such as fit it best for the end it is to serve; and that whenever, by deviating from this form or these proportions, it becomes less fit for its purpose, so will it appear less beautiful. (...) Not so, however, with buildings; they may be perfectly fitted to their purpose, and yet not only devoid of beauty, but positively hideous and disgusting to the eye. Indeed, they are always so, when really designed with no view beyond utility and strength. If mere building, or engineering works, not affecting architecture, ever appear pleasing or even inoffensive, it is because they were intended and designed to please, and therefore are really architectural, and their designers really architects Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Well-read men are obsessed with Politeness Elias Canetti, Auto da Fe Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. Eliel Saarinen And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night Exodus 13:21 KJV And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. Exodus 24:4, KJV And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. Exodus 33:4 KJV And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. Exodus 33:9-10, KJV I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Ezekiel 16:7 KJV We had been awake all night my friends and I, under the mosque-lamps whose filligree copper bowls were constellated like our very souls…we had trampled out our ancestral ennui on opulent turkey carpets, arguing to the limits of reasoning, and blackening innumerable sheets of paper with our frantic scriblings... Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) We were alone before the hostile stars…alone with the stokers who sweat before the satanic furnaces of great ships, alone with the black phantoms who ferret in the red hot bellies of locomotives as they hurtle forward at insensate speeds Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) We all started up, at the sound of a double-deck tram rumbling past, ablaze with multi-coloured lights, like a village in festival dress that the flooded Po tears from its banks and sweeps through gorges and rapids, down to the sea. But afterwards the silence grew deeper, and we heard only the muttered devotions of the old canal and the creaking of the arthritic, ivy-bearded old palaces until -suddenly- we heard the roar of famished motor-cars beneath the windows Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) We drew near to the snorting beasts and laid our hands on their burning breasts. Then I flung myself like a corpse on a bier across the seat of my machine, but sat up at once under the steering-wheel, poised like a guillotine blade against my stomach Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) Ours was no ideal love, lost in the soaring clouds, nor a cruel queen to whom we must offer our bodies contorted like Byzantine jewellery Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) I swung the car round in its own length like a mad dog trying to bite its own tail, and there, wobbling towards me were two cyclists, as confusing as two equally convincing arguments, right in my line of travel. I pulled up so short that the car, to my disgust, looped into the ditch and came to rest with its wheels in the air. O maternal ditch, brimming with muddy water - O factory drain! I gulped down your nourishing mud and remembered the black breasts of my Sudanese nurse. And yet, when I emerged, ragged and dripping from under the capsized car, I felt the hot iron of delicious joy in my heart. And so, face covered in good factory mud - plastered in swarf and slag, sweat and soot - bruised and in splints, but undaunted yet, we pronounce our fundamental will to all the live spirits of the world. Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) 4. We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty - the beauty of speed. A racing car with its bonnet draped with exhaust-pipes like fire-breathing serpents - a roaring racing car, rattling along like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the winged victory of Samothrace Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) 5. We will hymn the man at the steering wheel, whose ideal axis passes through the earth, whirling round on its orbit. Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) 10. We will destroy all museums and libraries, and academies of all sorts; we will battle against moralism, feminism, and all vile opportunism and utilitarianism. Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) 11. We will sing of the stirring of great crowds - workers, pleasure-seekers, rioters - and the confused sea of colour and sound as revolution sweeps through a modern metropolis. We will sing the midnight fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with electric moons; insatiable stations swallowing the smoking serpents of their trains; factories hung from the clouds by the twisted threads of their smoke; bridges flashing like knives in the sun, giant gymnasts that leap over rivers; adventurous steamers that scent the horizon; deep-chested locomotives that paw the ground with their wheels, like stallions harnessed with steel tubing; the easy flight of aeroplanes, their propellors beating the wind like the banners, with a sound like the applause of a mighty crowd. Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Futirist Manifesto, Le Figaro, 20 Febuary 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
We who insist that a masterpiece must be burned with the corpse of its author …. Against the conception of the immortal and imperishable we set up the art of the becoming, the perishable, the transitory and the expendable Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Le Futirisme, quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
One finds today, with increasing ease, men of the people without culture or education, who are nevertheless endowed already with what I call the gift of mechanical prophecy Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, Le Futirisme, quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960)
Beauty consists in the experience of pleasure upon finding a relation in perceived sensible ideas accompanied by their concomitant intellectual ideas
Frances Hutcheson < /P>
I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos within you Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)Behold I shall show you the ultimate man. 'What is love? What is creation? What is Longing? What is a star?'thus asks the Ultimate Man and Blinks. The earth has become small, and upon it hops the ultimate man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
We have discovered happiness,'say the Ultimate Men and blink. They have left the places where living was hard: for one needs warmth. On loves one's neighbour and rubs oneself against him: for one needs warmth Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
You have made your way from worm to ma, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any ape Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestial hopes! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven, your very meanness in sinning cries to heaven Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
My hunger has astonishing moods Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
This is a bad country for hungry people Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
A sacred Yes is needed for the sport of creation Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
To seize the right to new values Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Sleeping is no mean art: you need to stay awake all day to do it. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
this God which I created was human work Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Ever more honestly it learns to speak, the Ego: and the more it learns, the more it finds titles and honours for the body and the earth. My Ego has taught me a new pride: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freelyu, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
There have always been many sickly people among those who invent fables and long for God: they have a raging hate for the enlightened man and for that youngest of virtues which is called honesty. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Let your virtue be too exalted for the familiarityof names Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He judged himself - that was his supreme moment Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and another is the image of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
That everyone can learn to read will ruin in the long run not only writing, but thinking too. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
courage wants to laugh Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
One does not kill by anger but by laughter Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
There are many souls one will never uncover unless one invents them first style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
the frost of solitude Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
The noble man wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good man wants the old things and that the old things shall be preserved. But that is not the danger for the noble man - that he may become a good man - but that he may become a impudent one, a derider, a destroyer. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
There are the consumptives of the soul: they are hardly born before they begin to die and to long for doctrines of wearinessand renunciation. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Everywhere resound the voices of those who preach death: and the earth is full of those to whom death must be preached Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war - a war of your opinions. And if you opnion is defeated, your honesty should still cry triumph over that Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Are you ugly? Very well, my brothers! Take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
there is wickedness in your sublimity, I know you Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
The state was invented for the superfluous Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Just look at these superfluous people! They steal for themselves the works of inventors and the treasures of the wise: they call their theftculture Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Avoid this bad odour! Leave the idolatry of the superfluous, Avoid this bad odour! Leave the smoke of these human sacrifices! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The earth still remains free for great souls. Many places are still empty style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Only there where the state ceases. Does the man who is not superfluous begin: does the song of the necessary man, the unique and irreplaceable melody begin Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The people have little idea of greatness, that is to say: creativeness. But they have a taste for all presenters and actors of great things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The world revolves about the inventor of new values: imperceptibly it revolves. But the people and the glory revolve around the actor. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The actor (…) always believes in that with which he most powerfully produces belief - produces belief in himself Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Truth has never yet clung to the arm of an inflexible man Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I love the forest. It is bad to live in town: too many of the lustful live there (…) If only you had become perfect at least as animals! But to animals belongs innocence Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He who makes no secret of himself excites anger in others: that is how much reason you have to fear nakedness! If you were gods you could then be ashamed of your clothes! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself - he created the meaning of things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creative men! Valuating is itself the value and jewel of all created things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) A change in values - that means a change in the creators of values style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He who has to be a creator always has to destroy Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The individual himself is still the latest creation Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Whaterver causes [the table of values that hangs over every people] to rule and conquer and glitter, to the dread and envy of its neighbour, that it accounts the sublimest, the paramount, the evaluation oand the meaning of all things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) It has always been creators and loving men who created good and evil style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I ove him who wants to create beyond himself Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Many a one grows too old even for his truths Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) All names of good and evil are images: they do not speak out, they only hint Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Whenever your spirit wants to speak in images, pay heed; for that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) May your bestowing love and your knowledge serve towards the meaning of the earth style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I have become nothing but speech Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) And you yourselves should create what you have hitherto called the World; the World should be formed in your image by your reason, your will and your love! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Creation - that is the great redemption of suffering Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Willing liberates Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) what would there be to create if gods existed? Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I see an image sleeping in the stone, the image of my visions! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) he who once towered up his thoughts in stone Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) there is battle and inequality and war for power and predominance even in beauty Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) How divinely vault and arch here oppose one another in the struggle: how they strive against one another with light and shadow, the divinely striving things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) You want to create the world before which you can kneel Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) And I desire beauty from no one as much as I desire it from you, you man of power Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) And do you tell me, friends, that there is no dispute over taste and tasting? But all life is dispute over taste and tasting! Taste: that is at the same time weight and scales and weigher Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Written over with the signs of the past and these signs overdaubed with new signs: thus you have hidden yourselves well from all interpreters of signs! style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) But how should you be able to believe, you motley-spotted men! You who are paintings of all that has ever been believed! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He who had to create always had his prophetic dreams and star auguries and he believed in belief! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Amazing is the poverty of my ribs Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) You lack innocence in desiring and you now slander desiring! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Where is beauty? Where I have to will with all my will; where I want to love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He who does not believe in himself always lies Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I am too hot and scorched by my own thought: it is often about to take my breat h away. Then I have to get into the open air and away from all dusty rooms Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) It is a long time since I experienced the reasons for my opinions style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Poets always thing that nature herself is in love with them Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) all gods are poets' images Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The statue lay in the mud of your contempt: but this precisely is its law, that its life and living beauty grow again out of contempt! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Ít was': that is what the will's teeth-gnashing and most lonely affliction is called. Powerless against that which has been done, the will is an angry spectator of all things past Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) You look up when you desire to be exalted. And I look down, because I am exalted Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) In the final analysis one experiences only oneself Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) The name of the gateway is written above it: Moment Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Everything straight lies', murmered the dwarf disdaifully, 'All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.' Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) We smile our knowledge to one another Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) for the sake of foolishness is wisdom mingled with all things Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) O sky above me, you pure, lofty sky! This is now your purity to me, that there is no etrenal reason spider and spider's web in you - that you are to me a dance floor for divine chances, that you are to me a gods'table for divine dice Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He had wanted to learn what had been happening to me while he had been away: whether they had become bigger or smaller. And once he saw a row of new houses, and he marvelled and said: What do these houses mean? Truly no great soul put them up as its image! [...] And Zarathustra stopeed and considered. At length he said sadly: Everything has become smaller! Everywhere I see lower doors... Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) they would like to persuade my foot to the tick-tock measure of a small happiness Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) (The fool is speaking) spit upon the great city that is the great rubbish pile where all the scum froths together! Spit upon the city of flattened souls and narrow breasts, of slant eyes and sticky fingers Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) This great city, and not only this fool, disgusts me. In both there is nothing to make better, nothing to make worse. […] Where one can no longer love, one should pass by. Thus spoke Zarathustra and passed by the fool and the great city. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) all existence here wants to become words Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) O human kind, you strange thing! You noise in dark streets! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) there is too much foreground in all men Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Where power is, there number becomes master: it has more power Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Upon what bridge does the present go over to the hereafter? Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Sensual pleasure: (…) the earth's garden joy, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Sensual pleasure the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope style='mso-tab-count:1'> Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) Selfishness (…) around which everything becomes a mirror Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) He who will one day teach men to fly will have moved all boundary stones; all boundary stones will themselves fly into the air to him, he will baptize the earth anew - as 'the weightless' Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
He who wants to become light and a bird must love himself
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883)
Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself 'Good'and Évil. For its sake are we forgiven for being alive. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) And we - we bear loyally what we have been given upon har dshoulders over rugged mountains! And when we seat we are told: 'Yes, life is hard to bear!'But only man is hard to bear! That is because he bears too many foreign things upon his shoulders. Like the camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well laden. Especially the strong, weight-bearing man in whom dwell respect and awe: he has laden too many foreign heavy words and values upon himself - now life seems to him a desert! Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) All my progress has been an attempting and a questioning - and truly, one has to learn how to answer such questioning! That however - is to my taste: not good taste, not bad taste, but my taste, which I no longer conceal and of which I am no longer shamed Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) I tell myself to myself Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, transl. R.J. Hollingdale 1961 (1883) And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. Genesis 28:18, KJV And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day. Genesis 35:20, KJV And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Genesis, 2, 19 King James Version And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed Genesis, 2,8 King James Version[Laugier's] rustic hut is in no way a work of nature. Every work by the hand of man is a work of art
Guillamot (1768).
Why does the archway not collapse even though it appears to have no support? It is because the stones all want to fall down together
Heinrich von Kleist
Well buildinghath three conditions; Commodity, Firmness and Delight Henry Wotton, 1624 Is it that by its (the colour white's) indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visibleabsence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for th4ese reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows - a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink?And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues - every stately or lovely emblazoning - the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified nature absolutely paints like a harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all subjects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper Herman Melville, The Whiteness of the Whale, from Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) Faith, sir I've- Faith? What's that? Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation like.. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) O nature, and O soul of man! How far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! Not the smallest atom stirs of lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) [Queequeg's] tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even to himself could read... Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) in landlessness alone resides the highest truth Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) all deep earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independenc of her sea Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) a soul's a sort of fifth wheel to a wagon Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since the perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) Queequeg was native of Kokoko, an island far away to the West and the South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the whale, (1851) Let every object under our consideration, be imagined to have its inward contents scoop'd out so nicely, as to have nothing of it left but a thin shell Hogarth (1753) Mr. Garbett, in his learned and able treatise on the principles of design in architecture, has dissected the English house and found with the light of two words, fallen from Mr. Emerson, the secret of the inherent ugliness of that structure. It is the cruelty and selfishness of a London House, he says (and I think he proves it too), which affects us so disagreeably as we look upon it. Now, these qualities in a house, like the blear-eyed stolidity of a habitual sot, are symptoms, not diseases. Mr. Garbett should see herein the marvellous expression of which bricks and mortar can be made the vehicles. In vain he will attempt to get by embellishment a denial of selfishness, so long as selfishness reigns. To medicate the symptoms will never, at best do more than affect a metastasis -suppress an eruption Horatio Greenough Few enjoyments, writes Hume, are given us from the open and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labour and industry, we can extract them in great abundance. Hence the ideas of property become necessary in all civil society. Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Moralsa kind of Physiology of the human understanding
Immanuel Kant
familiarity is a complement to social difference.
Interpreting Walter Benjamin on Proust
And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. Isiah 28:4 KJV In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, Isiah 3:18, KJV Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off. Thine heart shall meditate terror. Where is the scribe? where is the receiver? where is he that counted the towers? Isiah 33: 17-18, KJV The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house. Isiah 44:13 KJV It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our sceptre, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) All lunatics spend hours on cornices Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unposessed places. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) As this wave of memories flows in, the city soaks up like a sponge and expands Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches style='mso-tab-count:1'> Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) He knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) If the traveller does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Is what you see always behind you?, or rather, Does your journey take place only in the past? Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Isaura a city that moves entirely upwards Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Journeys to recover you past? (…) Journeys to recover your future? style='mso-tab-count:1'> Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Leaving there and proceeding for three days towards the east, you reach diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Memory is redundant: it repeats itself so that the city can begin to exist style='mso-tab-count:1'> Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) one city was depicted by the leap of a fish escaping from the cormorants beak style='mso-tab-count:1'> Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content (…) if a s a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labour which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the the measurements of its space and the events of its past Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) This city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember. (…) Between each idea and each point of the itinerary an affinity or a contrast can be established, serving as an immediate aid to memory. So the world's most learned men are those who have memorized Zora. (..) forced to remain motionless and always the same, in order to be more easily remembered, Zora has languished, disintegrated, dispappeared. The Earth has fogotten her. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city style='mso-tab-count:1'> Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) You walk for days (…) rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognised that thing as a sign for another thing. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.(…) If a building has no signboard or figure, its form and the position it occupies in the city's order suffice to indicate its function. (...) Your gaze scns the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) Zora has the quality of remaining in your memory point by point, in its succession of streets. (…) Zora's secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns following one another as in a musical score where not a note can be altered or displaced. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (1972) A building participates in the politics of being; it takes up a position, a pose for the owner Jacob VoorthuisA truthful architecture convinces on the basis of premises shared between the maker and the beholder. For the last two hundred years theorists have been able to convince the general public that a truthful or honest architecture is philosophically possible. It is a remarkable feat of logical coercion
Jacob Voorthuis
Architecture as poetry must then show its connections to a mind, must synthesise all its separate principles into one violent statement about desires, histories and their meaning, the future, hope and the understanding of nature. Poetry is the construct which binds the building to the ideas and values with which it is associated, it is the synthesis of our divisive metaphysics, resolving the hermeneutic dilemma by tying everything which had fallen apart by a new understanding, together again into an impression of wholeness. Jacob Voorthuis Architecture can not be judged in terms of a-moral or disinterested aesthetic criteria. Because every building is an extension of mind and because that mind intrudes into free and neutral space, architecture has to be judged according to its place within a spectrum of human values. Architecture participates in society. Jacob Voorthuis Architecture is but a special distillation of a ubiquitous architectonic. style='mso-tab-count:1'> Jacob Voorthuis As soon as the arguments of truths purities as well as their antithesis assemble around structure as the cause of truths and purities, and specifically not around the idea of a style as a purely formal index of a Zeitgeist or Volksgeist, it is no longer satisfying to take sides in a battle of styles, this battle becomes irrelevant. Jacob VoorthuisBuildings practising their disappointment
Jacob Voorthuis
Each definition of beauty proclaims its discovery of the mechanics of the mind and the creation
Jacob Voorthuis
Economy and cheapness are two different concepts, thinly divided by the fact that they both refer to the same thing, but on the basis of different attitudes Jacob Voorthuis From a perspective coloured by the rise of the Modern Movement, where the preoccupation with time manifested itself in the attempt to throw off its weight with the new-found confidence in formal nihilism and brusque anti-historicism, it is not difficult to concede to the commonly held charge that Victorian architecture is characterised by the stigma of failure and doubt. Jacob Voorthuis Historically the Victorian architectural ideal has been represented in terms of style. The Victorians, so the saying goes, had an intense desire to have a style of their own. Their moral values, their moral aesthetics could not be fully expressed without a style of their own. Indeed the American Thomas Hastings, responded to the debate by saying that style is the problem solved. Summerson believes, and he is probably right, that every Victorian building of any consequence is a statement of stylistic belief- either a belief in one style, or the peaceful coexistence of styles, or in the efficacy of a mixed style. What they all shared in common was the desire for style. The problem of style, having identified a selection of styles became one of choice. The choices involved, due to the archaeology of styles, forced the architect, the critic and the historian to think in terms of a Dilemma of Style. In fact Mordaunt Crook, who chose the phrase as the title of his book, went so far as to use for his motto a quotation by Pevsner who said that if the historian of architecture does not take style dead seriously, he stops being a historian. Style indicates the identity of time and place, and historians reconstruct identities Jacob Voorthuis If the eruption of a style can be related to a single principle, namely the integrity of the Vitruvian triad, then the argument which is unleashed will run along the lines of truths and purities measuring the varying degrees of deviance from a meridian defined by that principle. The structural definition of style seeks out the bones and organs beneath the skin as Mies was later to realise. Jacob Voorthuis If ever there was an architecture of desire, of intense hero-worship, an architecture reaching out to emulate, it was the architecture of the nineteenth century. Never before had there been such a need for buildings and never before had there been such a desire for style and these were factors curiously compatible with the energy and hope which the architects invested in their designs. Jacob Voorthuis If twentieth-century architecture was an attempt to come to terms with space, then nineteenth century architecture was an attempt to come to terms with time. Time in the sense of historical time, the point of accumulation of an historical identity. A preoccupation with time in terms of archaeological reconstruction and cultural affiliation, dominates most of the contemporary discussions about architecture. Jacob Voorthuis In order to understand what style meant, in the 19th century, it is necessary to inquire into what the idea of nation meant, one has to inquire into the nineteenth century understanding of the mechanics of history and into the nostalgic or primitivist attitudes towards various episodes in history. Style thus becomes part of a social history. Jacob Voorthuis It is only faith which demands permanence, it is the dead who go on forever. Jacob VoorthuisLoyalty to a cause discourages hybridisation and discourages relativity. The concept of architectural purity was born out of loyalty to an account of architectural origins
Jacob Voorthuis
Poetic architecture then is that architecture which is made sacred by being able to represent achievements which people have projected as desires
Jacob Voorthuis
Poetry is a grammar of approach to experience.
Jacob Voorthuis
Style begins with an integrated conception of the Vitruvian triad. It is a system of related forms in the service of convenience and dictated by the behaviour of materials under the force of gravity. Style is structure (incorporating both organisation constructional aspects) in the service of desire. Structure is the core of a system from which a centrifugal logic can derive every detail of a building
Jacob Voorthuis
Style is something you have to own. Modernism erupted from an obsessive concern with the ownership of style
Jacob Voorthuis
style is the shape of habit, the shape and differentiation of space demanded by a special liturgy Jacob Voorthuis Style represents something in terms of something else. It is form representing political, social, cultural and moral aspirations. In the nineteenth century the concept of style was asked to represent the thing that was being aspired to, the ideal that was being searched for: the achievement of aspirations. As such the style of the nineteenth century could not be other than faceless and its achievements could only be seen as a failure. The architects thought their search for a style would entail a search for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, something tangible and whole that was there, if only they could get to it. Now with the benefit of hindsight we can say that their search for a style constituted their style. Their fault, if such it was, was to search in the past. They identified, constructed homogeneities, aesthetic units in terms of period and place which they called styles. Then they projected those homogeneities onto their own times and felt depressed. They were not able to see their own unities. The flaw was based on the incredible confidence that their copies were indistinguishable form the true objects. That style of the nineteenth century represents not the product of aspirations but the process of aspiration itself in a way that is more abstract than the way the Gothic style they so admired stood for the process of aspiration was lost on them. Victorian architecture is the architecture of aspiration and search. But without a concomitant belief.. It is a tragic architecture in that sense, and truly heroic in its bewilderment. For the doubting contemporary critics and for the certain and self-congratulatory modernists, the gap between the process and the product represents the supposed failure. But that is precisely what constitutes its success. Victorian architecture constitutes an analysis of process which, as far as its theoretical foundations are concerned, stands unequalled. It is nineteenth century theory which constitutes modern theory. The architecture of the nineteenth century continually achieved its projected end but that end, when it presented itself, was rejected and went unrecognised. As it stands, Victorian architecture is a monument to time: the eternal unfulfillment of desire. It is the architectural equivalent of Plato's Eros, the demi-god whose eternity had to be spent being an in-between, always aspiring, always unsatisfied and never realising that he was desiring desire itself. Jacob Voorthuis Style should be a word which, with the benefit of hindsight can be adduced to a period or place. It represents the recognition of a differentiated pattern, an order. Elements separate and reconfigure and come to stand for a new whole. To make style into a normative concept which projects such differentiations into the future changes the nature of the insight irretrievably. The two sorts of style, the hindsight and the foresight are not the same. When a style is felt lacking, the search for a future style becomes itself an element of the hindsight-style. The normative and historical styles intersect only at the point where they both represent an instance of order. But the kind of order each represents is completely different in each case. Jacob Voorthuis The Gothic had continued the Roman process of cutting away at the substance of buildings; the advance of science was tackling the waste-problem. However, 19th century admiration for this slimness, without its cause being properly understood had simply become an excuse for inexpensive building. That is well illustrated by the motivation for the choice of Gothic as the style for the commissioners churches: it was thought cheap Jacob Voorthuis The health of Vitruvianism as a creed is fed by the obscurity and ambiguity of the text on which it is based. It is the paradox of the bible. There are many levels of meaning, some of which are not intended but extracted. Some interpreters are even able to see nothing, or mere chaos. Jacob Voorthuis The implications of the ideas of progress and genius for the concept of nature, are that nature must be infinite in a finite sort of way: like a ladder, one dimension is finite and constant, the other is infinite and progressive. Genius, having depleted one level of principles, is forced onto ever higher levels. This combination of an infinite number of finite levels from which principles can be deduced, implies that there is progress in art, a form of teleological evolution, an inevitable movement towards ultimate perfection. That's good. Jacob Voorthuis the poetry of architecture evades or outstrips formulation, and elevates. It is a medium between the low and the high and a category which, by soaring higher, evades categorisation Jacob Voorthuis The symptoms of style, by being separated from their genitive principles, disfigured both the content and the form of an object. These disfigurements represent the style of the nineteenth century, a nostalgic historicism of fragments, often put together uncomfortably to compose some of the most sweeping and moving buildings of all time, buildings exuding an air of helpless energy, bewilderment and even disillusionment. Many Victorian buildings were snubbed in their attempt to be what they were not. Jacob Voorthuis The waste of materials in Greek temples was no waste in the ordinary sense, it was the conspicuous waste, not merely of a science in its infancy but the exuberance of visual, religious and social sophistication. The waste of materials was a necessary corollary to faith, an act of sacrifice to eternity. This need for waste was undermined by the scientific excellence of Gothic builders. The sacrifice of material was therefore transformed into a sacrifice of mind. Since then however, the ideal of economy had merely evolved into the compromise of permanence. Society's symbolism had lost its way in the urgency of commercial enterprise and social upheaval. Jacob VoorthuisTruth is a way of talking
Jacob Voorthuis
Truth really stands for loyalty to a cause.
Jacob Voorthuis
Truth represents a corpus of assumptions which relates the owner to the perceiving subject through the artefact
Jacob Voorthuis
To learn from great architects, you do not concentrate solely on what they do, but the way they do it. Jacob Voorthuis (hardly original though)Utopias start from a political structure which has its equivalent in architectural forms determining the ideal geometry of specifically utopian activities; ideal political structures have to be maintained by their architectural forms. Architecture as the gradometer of social and political relations was and still is the primary standard of measurement of any civilization.
Jacob Voorthuis but hardly original
Buildings in order participate in the process of civilisation must help to eradicate a destructive, isolating selfishness as symbolised by the egocentric view of the oyster, and promote instead a more subtle and long-term form of self-interest which is embodied in the concept of society and civilisation. That refined self-love resides in benevolence which is based on a utilitarian conception of the relationship between the individual and society.Buildings in that relationship have to appear polite, paying tribute, not solely to the riches and power of the owner and his exclusive concern for his own well-being but using his riches to greater effect in an act of benevolence towards the environment as a whole. That is how the individual and the mass become interdependent aspects of the same process of civilisation Jacob Voorthuis explaining Garbett Laugier's savage is more like Garbett's projection of a super-civilised class, designated as the thinking few. That class forms an aesthetic nobility which developed their intellectual maturity, like Robinson Crusoe and like Rousseau's Emile, by unlearning the prejudices cultivated by society. They had gone full circle, achieving a sublimated savage- or child-like state by going beyond civilisation. The label super-civilised, although not used by Garbett, is in this sense peculiarly appropriate. They had supposedly succeeded in transcending the narrowing effects of the prejudices pervading contemporary English society. Those prejudices were caused by the contingent as well as habit-driven connections of acquired associations. By being able to distinguish consciously between the natural and the acquired, the thinking few were in a position to appreciate complex, higher, poetic truths and beauties with the same directness with which the child and savage were thought to prefer bright colours and simple melodies subconsciously. Jacob Voorthuis explaining Garbett's ideasOnly once a building has been dissected can the elevation be considered physiognomically interesting
Jacob Voorthuis explaining Garbett's ideas
The process of cultivation, of transcending the errant masses, is the shedding of the accretions of wasted explanations, of superstitions and sticky stupidity. Jacob Voorthuis explaining Garbett's ideas Youth determines its own form, old age is battered into shape. Jacob Voorthuis explaining Garbett's ideas Perfection is absolute, it resides in the immutable, the unchanging and the a-priori. This is no paradox and there is no need to reconcile the immutability of perfection with the inevitability of its succession in history, after all perfection is achieved relative to a set of premises, by the search after truth, the moment that perfection is reached it is superseded by the ambition of architects and the impatience of an ignorant public: Jacob Voorthuis interpreting Garbett The renaissance of architecture occurred with the rise of the Gothic, the renaissance as we know it is merely a nostalgic attempt at reversion through the medium of acquired associations. Jacob Voorthuis interpreting Garbett When architecture becomes poetic, it becomes semantically complete; poetic architecture is architecture in the fullest sense of the word. It serves not just the owner, the user, the beholder but the nation as a whole, the nation as a movement towards a greater purpose Jacob Voorthuis interpreting Garbett And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life. Jeremiah 4:30 KJV Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and be style='mso-tab-count:1'> Job 40:9-10, KJV Nobody with a good car needs a justification. . John Huston, Wise Blood There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and the vigour of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. John Ruskin, The Lamp of Obedience, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, ad fin Truth is content, when it comes into the world to wear our mantles, to learn our language, to conform itself as it were to our dress and fashion...it speaks with the most idiotical sort of men in the most idiotical way, and becomes all things to all men. John Smith, Discourses, 1673. It is fitting that at the centre of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant. Jorge Louis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings. I hold to be generally, if not always defects...Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in the human figure; it is by them that we are cognizable and distinguished from one another; but they are always so many blemishes, which, however, both in real life and in painting cease to appear deformities to those who have them continually before their eyes. In the works of art, even the most enlightened mind, when warmed by beauties of the highest kind, will by degrees find a repugnance within him to acknowledge any defects Joshua Reynolds, Discourses we criticise Rembrandt and other Dutch painters who introduced into their historical pictures exact representations of individual objects, with all their imperfections.. Joshua Reynolds, Discourses the products of men's hands (...) appear as independent beings endowed with life. style='mso-tab-count:1'> Karl Marx, Capital, Oxford, 1974, vol. i, p. 77 Decorative invention stands in the service of desire, vision and belief Kostof (1985) chapter 14 Life, by its own forces, tends continually to increase the volume of every body that possesses life, and to enlarge the dimensions of that bodies parts, up to a limit which life itself brings ab Lamarck 1835 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? Lamentations 2:15, KJV The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. Lamentations 2:8, KJV Dave lay in the darkness and thought about life. He had learned early on that he would never truly understand anything. The best you could hope for was a working misunderstanding. Through careful refinement, a working misunderstanding might actually lead to successful predictions. This, as he understood it, was called science. Lewis Shiner Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence one with another: it is the office and excellency of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this there is another connection of ideas wholly owing to chance and custom Locke Of the Association of Ideas, Essay, II, xxxiii, 3tradition is the presence of the past
loosely quoted vrom T.S. Eliot's essay on Tradition
Our buildings -and our Public Buildings in particular- should be to some extent like poems. The Impression they make on us should arouse in us sensations that correspond to the function of the building in question style='mso-tab-count: 1'> Louis Étienne Boullée, Architecture, essai sur l'art Just as our ancestors found their inspiration in the world of religion which weighed upon their souls, so we must draw ours from the tangible miracles of contemporary life… Manifesto of Futurist painting, 11 february 1910, quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) ..the resources of an artist are required to give an artistic and poignant expression even of rudeness Montgomery Schuyler, The Chicago Renascence, (Mumford 1972) There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom Erige les construction massives pour la ville future/Qu'elle s'eleve dans le ciel libre des aviateurs Paolo Buzzi, 1909 quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1989 (1960) The history of the concept of Style could be interpreted as the history of the attempt to overcome the duality between content and form, either by acceptance of that duality or by its rejection Paraphrase and interpretation of Susan Sontag, On Style Edward Gibbon had sketched the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, using its architecture as a unit of measure to calibrate decadence Paraphrase of Anthony Vidler (1987) pp. 178 Property is not a natural thing. The act of appropriation is akin to an act of consecration. Objects or things become someone's property by way of a ritualistic pronouncement, such as: this is mine. Paraphrase of David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals outward symmetry in nature is always maintained whatever the internal arrangement of parts, or organs. Internal symmetry is frequently wasteful and not organic Paraphrased from Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 When perceived directly, the moving or the contorted body is in a complete mess, limbs akimbo. For some reason this does not disturb us. Therefore, it does not matter if one cannot see symmetry directly, it is more important that one can deduce its presence. When we see a person in movement we do not perceive that person's symmetry, we deduce its presence from the processing of sequential percepts and comparing that with our experience. Bodily symmetry which can be so deduced conforms to our expectations of health with which is meant normality Paraphrased from Edward Lacy Garbett, A Rudimentary Treatise on the principles of design in architecture, 1850 Moments of agony are permanent with such permancence as time has. We appreciate this better in the agony of others, nearly experienced, involving ouselves, than in our own. For our own past is covered by the currents of action, But the torment of others remains an experience Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition. Paraphrased from T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, 1935-1942 The inhabitant of the great urban centres reverts to a state of savagery - that is - of isolation. Paul Valéry, quoted by Walter Benjamin If system then be all, that an art requires to bring it to perfection, how lamentable it is that so noble an art as Architecture should, in modern days, be without system. Peter Legh (1831) Tijd, tja, 't kan voor je liggen, 't kan achter je liggen… Time, well,…it might be lying there in front of you, it might be lying there behind you. Peter Voorthuis, strolling along a beach somewhere in the 1980's Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Psalm 49, 11 their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling style='mso-tab-count: 1'> Psalm 49, 14 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Psalm 50, 12 the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Psalm 50, 2 Il faut dire que l'architecture imite la nature, non dans un objet donne, non dans un modele positif, mais en transportant dans ses oeuvres les lois que la nature suit dans les siens. Cet art ne copie point un objet particulier, il ne repete aucun ouvrage, il imite l'Ouvrier et se regle sur lui. Il imite enfin non comme le peintre fait un modele, mais comme l'eleve qui saisit la maniere de son maitre, qui fait, non ce qu'il voit, mais comme il voit faire. Quatremère de Quincy (1832) Vol. II, L'architecture ne commence à être un art chez les différens peuples où elle peut s'introduire, que lorseque déjà ceux a sont parvenu à un certain degré de culture, d'opulence & de luxe. C'est alors que, s'éloignant toujours de plus en plus des travaux & des occupations rustiques, & s'enfermant dans les villes, les hommes cherchent à remplaces les plaisirs de la Nature qu'ils perdent de vue, par les jouissances des arts qui en sont les imitateurs Quatremère de Quincy, Dictionnaire d'architecture,1788-1825 L'art de bâtir suivant des proportions & des règles déterminées & fixées par la Nature & le Goût. L'art de bâtir se trouve chez les peuples même sauvages; l'art de l'architecture au contraire n'a pu être que le fruit de la société la plus perfectionnée par la civilisation, par toutes les causes morales, par les concours de to