Frozen Fountain Bragdon

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lheFROZENFOUNT IN ingEssayson RCHITECTURE a n d ~ R T o f D E S I G N i n S P C ECL UDE BR GIDN


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ONTENTSIntroduction

I F O U N D A T I O l S T O N E S

I I T H E F R O Z E N F O U N T A I N

I I I R E T R O S P E C TIV T H E S K YS C RA PE R

V R E G U LA T I N G L IN E S

VI I S O M E TR IC P E R S P E CT IV E

V I I O R N A M E N T

V I I I TO E S K I P P E D Y T H E C AS UA L R E AD E RIX C O L O R

489365872


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INTRO U TION

ISbook is addressed to everyone interested in the finearts to designers in all fields and particularly to archi-

~ ; . . L - : : . teets architectural students and draughtsmen. It con-stitutes the final distillation of many years of thoughtand experimentation along unusual lines. Naturally Iam desirous that i t shall be read and pondered but -

cording to the habit of the day there are many who will only skim it andlook at the pictures. Realizing this I have tried to cram these s full ofmeaning and interest s possible making them self exp lanatory and pro-vocative. To this end I have had recourse to a most ancient device oneused by Dii rer and Hogarth. It consists in many different presentations.of the same symbolical character in situations and surroundings whichare themselves symbolical as in h Dance of Death and h Rake sProgress.


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TH FROZ N FOUNT INitself seemed appropriate because - well, aren t we all? I mean, of course,bad sinners. It is a synonym for Everyman, which is what I w a n t e d -the reader, the author, the candlestick-maker: that is, more specifically,the artist. This is a sort of Pilgrim s Progress. John Bunyan s masterpieceis a serious book, but so entertaining that my mother used to read it aloudto me when I was a child. This is a serious book, but with Sinbad s helpI have tried to make it amusing. The American Spirit, as Kipling says, is stirred, l ike a child, by little things, an d I have so ug ht to honor thistruth by a du e observance.

The book deals largely with matters about which I have already written, an d sometimes it even repeats, in a different fo nn o f words, for th ebenefit of th e uninitiated reader, things which I have said elsewhere; bu t

. for this I offer no apology. Every author, however wide interests orvarious his gifts, can write but on e book - the book of himself; an d -cause life perpetually unfolds, he writes it in installments. No w a serialshould be accompanied by a synopsis of the antecedent chapters to makeit comprehensible to the reader wh o comes upon t he story for th e first time.This is th e only extenuation I have to offer for the echoes from my otherbooks which may be found herein. Aimed to relieve t he r ea de r of th e necessity of referring to those other books, these repetitions perform the officeof the sandwich which saves one, on a journey, t he t rouble of going backto the inn.

I desire here to make acknowledgment of my indebtedness to thefollowing books an d authors:

Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek ase by Ja y Hambidge (Yale University Press, Ne w Haven, Conn.; 1902) .

Proportional Form by Samuel Colman an d C. Arthur Coan (G. P.Putnam s Sons, Ne w York an d London; 1920).

Magic Squares and Cubes by W. Andrews T he O pe n Court Publishing Company, Chicago; 1908).

Geometry of Four Dimensions by Henry Parker Manning The


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Librairie du Bureau des Lo ng it ud es, d e l Ecol e Pol yt ec hn iq ue , Paris,France) .Le Nombre d or: Les Rh) thmes, by Ma ti la C. G hy ka Librairie Gal-

limard, Rue de Beaune, Paris, France .

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INTRO U TION 3


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SINMD l tm iE r o U ~ i O fIbNf S CF T ll EMPLE a AQCHI1 EC IURE

FOUN TION S T O N E SHE LITER TURE of architecture is concerned al-most exclusively with the history of the development ofthis or that style and the description and analysis of fa-mous buildings Of the fundamental principles uponwhich the architectural art is founded few books haveanything to say. But without this sort of elementary

knowledge the architectural designer lacks criteria for intelligent self-criticism misses the path of true creativeness and is likely to committhe most atrocious blunders without being in the least aware.

However often I may appear to wander into this or that by path orfix my eyes too myopically on the here and now my one controlling pur-pose is to attempt to supply by direct statement by implication by il-lustration the above mentioned lack namely: criteria for the judgmentof any work of architectural art belonging to the past; generic principlesfor the guidance of those who are working in this field at the present time

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Reduced to text-book form, without amplification or illustration,these first principles may be stated thus :

Architecture is the art of significant buildingThe dictionary definition of the word significant is having a mean

ing, expressive, suggestive, with pregnant or secret sense; not insignificantor negligible.When it is added, therefore, that architecture is dmmatization it isonly repeating the original statement in a different form of words. For todramatize is to make significant, to bring out what is essential by suppression of the inessential; to render pregnant - to eloquently express.

But to express what exactly?First of all, the idea which is the mison d etre of every work of archi

tectural art, without which it could no more exist than a sentence couldexist without a thought. o far as possible a building should publish to thebeholder the purpose which it subserves - what it is for what it is aboutwhy it is it is and not othen\ ise. The human virtues of truthfulness andsincerity are architectural virtues too: a prison ought to look like a prison,and a church ot:lght to look like a church. A steel-framed building shouldnot be given the appearance of one of solid masonry; terra-cotta andcement should not be made to imitate stone; nor shingles, Spanishtile. By the terms of our definition these .and similar. practices standcondemned. .

Expressed in a form of words made familiar by Louis Sullivan, theform should never belie the function, bu t should follow and express it,and the function should determine the form, as in the case of naturalorganisms. This amounts to saying that a work of architecture should beorganic functional.

To recapitulate: Architecture is pre eminently the ar t of significantform in space forms significant of function: dramatic by reasonof their eloquence an d expressiveness; organic by reason of their mutualinterrelations an d their adaptation of means to ends.

If every architectural designer would write these three words: SIG

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All this is simple self-evident truth and sound architectural doctrine; bu t it does not tell the whole story nor account for all the facts.For architecture is always and inevitably the handwriting on space of thesoul of a people or of a period and if that soul be frivolous. bombasticmendacious the very falsity of the architecture will constitute its essential truth - truth to the thing it stands for and represents. Moreover sucharchitecture may be justified on grounds other than those outlined; may

But this is not all: I have reserved until the last the thing which isthe most important s it is the most difficult to describe belonging s itdoes to the higher dimension of consciousness. Forced to name it in a singleword which could be understood by everyone I should have to call it theaIsthetic quality which is more than a blend of the other three howeverinextricably mixed up with them - .esthetic not in the narrow meaningof the term .. in accordance with good taste bu t in the broader deepersense of beautifulness. To the intuitive-minded I dare speak its true namewhich is l o v e ~ ecstasy without th e operation of which in one form or another the highest beauty is impossible.

This is a spiritual essence and s such like the digit placed beforethree ciphers it gives the other three essentials .their value for without itthey are from one point of view nothing. is by reason of love manifesting s beautifulness that a work of engineering becomes a work of architectural art This quality of love our architecture conspicuously lacks.Compared with the cathedrals of Chartres Amiens an d Paris not enoughlove has gone into the making of our cathedrals of commerce - notenough prayer not enough praise not enough sacrifice; which is only another way of saying that in them the idea of profit triumphs over the ideaof perfection. Caressed by sunlight embraced by mist they are sometimesmade beautiful in their own despite - for love can perform that miracle- but they do not impress by reason of any beauty beyond the merelynecessitous. Economy and efficiency are not after all everything so tosignificant dramatic organic le t us add e s t t i ~ with this for an overword: Wake and dream.

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I ITH FROZEN FOUNT INWORK of art must portray not only a world aspect bu tth world order: through and by means of the concreteand particular i t should suggest the abstract and thegeneric it must be not only typical> but archetypalTruth to fact is not enough truth to li what required whatever story it may chance to tell a work

of art must also tell the story of creation.Nature herself gives us the hint of how this can done. A snowflake

for example no matter how it may differ from every other snowflake inits double tetrahedral form and spine like structure revealatory of the na-ture of water crystallization. The unique form at the same time a for-mula of all possible snowflake forms.

pplyingthis principle to architecture a building over and aboverevealing its character and function should tell something of the natureof gravitation suspension tension; of the properties of form color light

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and marble polished in order tha t its maximum of beauty may appear.This is almost automatically accomplished by following the line of least resistance, by letting the material itself dictate its treatment - by with-working to coin a word to fit the case.

These are matters of right dramatization of which nature is the greatexemplar - nature, which tirelessly tells the story of creation to our unseeing eyes. It is significant in this connection that ou r two pioneer functionalists, Louis Sullivan and his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright, were loversand students of nature. In Sullivan s The Autobiography of an Idea a passionate feeling for nature is revealed. . . I love nature ardently, he wroteme in a letter, and Wright once remarked while we were walking togetherin the woods, I don t see how a man can be a good architect unless helives near to nature. It is to their love of nature that I attribute the natu-ralness of their mental processes, their escape from that atrophy of the creative faculty which so often overcomes the schoolmen - students, not ofnature, bu t of art Sullivan, to be sure, w s a Beaux Arts man, but he specifically states that the school did not give him his start: My real start [hesays in the Autobiography] was made when, as a very young child, living much ou t of doors, I received impressions from the shifting aspects ofnature so deep, so penetrating, that they have persisted to this day.

Now to study nature does not mean to make charming little watercolors of natural objects. Harvey Ellis aphorism, One should go sketching with one s hands in one s pockets, indicates the more rewarding procedure: the study of nature, not in order to paint her portrait, but to pluckout the hear t of her mystery- to discover, that is, the law according towhich she works.

For nature is the same in all he r parts : like an air with variationsher visible music consists always and only in innumerable elaborationson one basic theme, and it is only the vast variety in form, color, material, in spatial magnitude and temporal duration which prevents us fromperceiving this inner identity, in the same way that it is the dramatic skilland versatility of an impersonator in the matter of facial expression,

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. What formula most perfectly expresses our sense of the life-process? Is itnot an ascension and a declension - in brief, a fountain: a welling up ofa force from some mysterious source, a faltering of the initial impulse byreason of some counter-aspect of that force, a subsidence, a return allimaged in the upward rush and downward fall of the waters of a fountain, a skyrocket, a stone flung from the hand in to the air?

This of course tells us nothing of life s meaning it is merely a symbolof the life-process. From nature we shall never learn life s meaning fornature s all pictures and no text, and its images tell us only s much s weourselves are able to read into them.

The idea once grasped that life a fountain we see always andeverywhere fountains, fountains - the sun itself, the up drawn watersand the descending rain the elm, the willow, the heart, the phallus, andthe mammary gland. But what has all this to do with architecture thereader may ask.

Everything For if life is indeed a fountain - a struggle upward-and nature a symbolization of that struggle, a work of architecture mustbe that too: a presentation, in terms of ponderable beauty, of the interplay and adjustment of contradictory forces. What happens in a fountainand in its every drop happens also in a building and in all its parts , wherestress and strain, compression and tension, thrust and counter thrust areceaselessly operative.

Accordingly it is the business of the architect to dramatize not onlya building s purpose and function, but also the interplay of forces goingon within it, and in so doing he will be dramatizing life itself. \Vhat constitutes a thing a work of ar t is this suggestion of the universal throughand by means of the particular. The play of Hamlet for example, is notonly the life of a man, bu t the life of man - Everyman s struggle with hisown self-elements, the enemies of his own household. In architecture theseenemies, which are at the same time progenitors and friends, are theforces of nature - the scalding sun, the lashing wind, the disruptivefrost, the insinuating rain: agents all in that apotheosis whereby . inthe hands of a true d r m ~ t i s t a work of engineering becomes a work of

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TH FROZ N FOUNT INof stone expanding fan-wise into the groined vaulting to see them s asuccession of water-jets fixed into immobility - time frozen into eternity.I have bu t to remember the dome and flanking minarets of Santa Sophiaandof the Taj Mahal Giotto s straight square bell-tower beside Brunelleschi s gigantic bubble the obelisk of Thebes the shrine of Vishnu atKhajuraho the diminishing masses of which take on the contours of falling water to see them all s frozen fountains thrust upward by the samemysterious energy which arises moment by moment in myself. For the verypower whereby I perceive these things is the same power whereby theywere themselves conce ived - t he powe r of the life-force one though infinitely differentiated and subdivided s the water a re se rvo ir whenhurled aloft is s pl it up into pearly drops and crystal ribbons like soulswhich issuing from the Unconscious trace each a shining parabola inspace-time and subside again into the reservoir of life.

So let the architect say to himself not only: I shall build enclosuresfor t he sh el te r and trafficking of human beings but also I shall createfrozen fountains with the vigor of geysers and the placidity of watersstilled at even. Such resolve and such endeavor will constitute for him hisaccolade.

Now a fountain is a unit which is nevertheless twofold for it consistsof an ascending and a descending stream a resistance and a succumbingthe first active masculine; the second passive feminine. Translated intoterms of architecture activity and passivity are epitomized in the verticalmember which opposes the gravitational pull and the horizontal memberwhi ch su bmi ts to it. The Greeks those superb dramatists instead of leaving th e column a mere cylinder of stone -with a splayed top to increaseth e bearing surface and lessen the span made of it a tapered fluted shaftthus suggesting a powerful rising force diminishing s it ascends andthey terminated this shaft with a capital cushion-shaped or downwardcurled indicative of the yielding of this force to the downward pressureof the lintel.

nd having toldin this way this story the tale is continued in the entablature which the Greeks dramatized in similar fashion. Mr. Pond callsattention to the fact that the forces acting in the entablature are compres

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these forces balance one another. Accordingly in the Ionic entablaturethe


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TH FROZ N FOUNT INthe upward sweep of columns and imposts breaking out into the groinedvaulting.

The sheer beauty of Greek and Gothic architecture - a necessitousbeauty - has seduced the latter-day architect in to the imitation and employment of their characteristic forms divorced from the functions whichthey originally subserved and which they so eloquently expressed. But n-so doing he violates the most fundamental canon of the architectural art:the dr m tiz tion of structure New materials and building methods-not to mention our altered attitude toward life - imperat ively demanda new architectural language. The failure to perceive this constitutes thefallacy of the eclectic architect - he who makes a fetish of mere goodtaste. The tang of his own time be it acrid or sweet should flavor everything the architect does; but along with this communication of the immediate the unique. the special there should communicated alsosome sense of the eternal and the absolute. Saturated s his work maybe and should be with the spir it of his own time it should yet be timelesss are the pyramids of Egypt the tragedies of Shakespeare the paintings

of Leonardo. The first of these aims he will achieve by a truthful use ofmaterials and a right expressiveness of use and function; the second by adramatization of the forces at play within the structure - in brief thefount in His problem s not basically different from that of the playwright or the novelist who in presenting the characters and relationships of a group of people in a localized environment gives an insight intolife itself and the essential nature of man and woman.

In most building operations of any magnitude solid masonry has beensuperseded by steel and re-enforced concrete but so great s the power ofinertia in the world of thought that even in works of engineering the oldmasonry forms still persist. Here is an example taken from my ownexpenence:

Having been called upon by an eminent bridge engineer to collaborate with him in the designing of a re-enforced concrete bridge he firstmade a diagram embodying his idea of the most logical and economicalform for i t: a series of great semicircular arches supporting a lesser ar

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TH FROZ N FOUNT IN6were reproductions of four-in-hand coaches with the addit ion of flangest o t he wheels and the latter imitated the horse-drawn vehicles of theirday. The use of the column entablature and arch in steel-frame construction is just such a survival: they have no justification in suc h con

struction because they falsify it.The vertical members of a sky-scraper for example are in effect o n t n u o u s ~ and the horizontalmembers.. beams though they befor the support of the floors perform the office of r c i n g ~ th ewhole being in effect a truss onend the verticals correspondingto cords The right dramatizationof all this may still be open toquestion bu t there can be nodoubt about the wrong one: tobedec k suc h a structure with columns pilasters cornices arches

~ P I R ~ N L I ~ PAN-HE1..J,.::E Nlc or other cerements of dead stylesCA1HEDPA[. HO r.EL NE W YOQK is to add lying to stealing. SuchTEQMINAilOH . MEDIAEVAl., MODERJi things constitute in this connection what S ul li va n calls dis-

senting lines - as inimical tounity of effect as dissenting votes are i ni mi ca l to politicalesthetic

unity.In the steel-framed building th e height of which is less or not too

much greater than its breadth it is all right to emphasize the horizontaldimension thus dramatizing the floor as the important thing but in a t ru eskyscraper it seems to me that the lines should sweep unbrokenly upwardto express the engineering fact of vertical continuity and the poetic fancyof an ascending force in defiance of gravity - a fountain.

But what goes up must come down gravity reasserts itself after the


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TH FROZ N FOUNT INmeasured by the success with which this termination is effected - by thebeauty with which his building i s on the white counterpane of th e sky.In this particular th e problem presented by a Go th ic c at he dra l tower isno t different from that of a skyscraper, and it is interesting to comparetwo typical solutions, on e media::- -- ,val and the other modern Illustration 3 . In t he spi re of Senlisthe transition from t he s qu ar e tot he octagon an d thence to thepyramid is effected with greatsubtlety: the angles are filled withminiature towers and spires, an dthe slender dormers set against th efaces of the steeple echo, in th eirvert icalit y, t he t ower below, andin their peaked roofs, the spireabove, like the ascending an d returning waters of a fountain in exquisite reconcilement. John MeadHowells Pan-Hellenic Hotel sug-gests no less a frozen fountain, the FOUR EXAMP lES cF ~ E A U 1 1 F U Ldiminishing force having seem- D E T ~ TEBMt OF A 2CHlTEC I JQEingly to have faltered at those L Jmathematically related stages 4where the set-backs occur; and, most powerful at the center, the upthrustterminal parallelopipedon finishes in jet-like tracery against th e sky.In obedience to a perhaps unconscious i nt im at ion on th e part of thedesigner of th e building s deeper symbolical significance, he has usedth e fountain motif in t he orn ament; moreover, the long vertical piersterminate in logarithmic spirals, suggestive that the rising force returns,fountain-wise, upon itself. The same symbolism is employed in the Ionicand Corinthian capitals, as shown in Illustration 4.


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made to symbolize the life of man as it should be which like a fountainis first to prevail and then to fail but to fail beautifully to meet death inthe feminine way with resignation as symbolized by the dome; or in themasculine way l ik Cyrano Steel in my heart and laughter on mylips to meet it with defiance as symbolized by the spire. In eithercase bubble or je t effort and its surcease stand epitomized in thefountain. Music is a fountain of sound upspringing in time from the stillpool of silence. nd because all of the arts aspire to the condition ofmusic architecture attains this most nearly when it suggests the invasionof space by an upthrusting force a frozen fountain.

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t he p re se nt q u it e i n analogy w ith the optical fact that to s ee a given o bject clearly on e sho ul d l oo k away f ro m it momentarily at something else.Accordingly le t us glance at ou r immediate architectural past in t he l ig hto f w hat we ar e doing and may do.

I have myself written an d published brief retrospects an d the thinghas been done by others better qualified; but as I cannot assume th e reader s acquaintance wit h t hi s country s ignominious architectural historybear with me while I briefly sketch certain of its later phases.O ur present industrial cycle a merry-go-round sans merriment already showing signs of running down - began in th e period following th eCivil War. This w s reflected in an architecture even more meaninglessan d debased than its European prototype. It seems in retrospect th e worstarchitecture in the world - feeble false pretentious.

Conditions were improved scarcely at all by th e advent of HenryHobson Richardson who ha d a genius for the three-dimensional picturesque. Although he made us architecture-conscious he was only a flamingcomet tracing a hyperbolic o rbit a nd exerting little gravitational pullafter he had passed.

In th e post-Richardsonian period o cc ur re d a revolutionary event ofth e highest evolutionary importance: th e development of the steel framesupplanting all-masonry construct ion an d making possible the skyscraper.Almost unnoted secretly an d silently a m et ho d o f building which datedfrom th e pyramids w s supplanted by something different in kind: wallsinstead of supporting were themselves supported; brick stone an d conc re te b ec am e m er e fillers an d veneers. Bu t architects tr ain ed in the masonry tradition continued to t hi nk a nd design in terms of an order whichha d passed. They made screen walls look s much s possible like supportin g walls they covered up steel s tr ut s a nd beams with Gothic arches andclassic orders an d they even went so far s to resort to concealed steelconstruction to hold up timbered ceilings and masonry vaulting whichcould no t even support themselves. In brief architecture abandoned eventhe pretense o f b ei ng a dramatization of structure and became mere scenedesigning.

Louis Sullivan a Beaux Arts educated architect Ne w England born

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of the new manner of construction and foresaw its far-reaching effectupon architectural design, though this perception w s no t achieved completely or at once. Sullivan himself had to go through what he called his masonry period in which, like all the others, he temporized and fumbled. But in a series of experiments culminating in the Guaranty (Pru-dential) Building in Buffalo, New York, he effected, in terms of design,the transition from solid masonry to fire-clay-encased steel. Although hiscareer was not, l ike Richardson s, triumphant and spectacular, and hiscreative genius faded before it w s fully mature, he became the spiritualfather of the skyscraper and wrote himself into architectural history s noother American has.

Meantime, at the World s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in1893, the leading architects of the country, men of ability and taste butwith a predilect ion for the old rather than for the new, had everythingtheir own way. Sullivan, to be sure, was given one bui lding, the Trans-portation, bu t it was outside the sacred precincts of the Court of Honor,s that nothing untoward should mar the white perfection of that latterday Forum Romanum behind the classic colonnades of ~ h i h were s-sembled all the ingenious gadgets and contraptions which the genius ofthe Machine Age had developed up to that time - Corinthian columncheek by jowl with Baldwin locomotive.

This resuscitation of ancient grandeurs was so bedecked with ban-ners, besplashed by fountains and beblared by bands that instead of beingaccepted for what it so evidently w s an architectural tour de for e astage-setting pure and simple, an archreological holiday - it was taken seriously s foreshadowing the American City of the Future, and was madethe mold into which all official architecture was thereafter cast. The Chicago World s Fair signalized the triumph of eclectic over functional architecture.

Let me here explain that an eclectic architect one who considershimself free to tel l his story in any architectural language he likes; whomakes a modern building Greek, Roman, GothiC, Renaissance, for no bet

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necessitous; that it must mirror the prevailing psychological mood andthat its forms must be determined by function He is therefore committed to a manner of building in which the stencils of past architectural styles cannot be used.

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Eclecticism with its facile and specious substitutions of moribundbeauty for an honestly attempted expression of the thing which s thusblighted in its bud the only vital and indigenous architectural growthwhich ever pierced through the merican mold that of Sullivan andhis disciples. It delayed our normal evolution and laid i ts dead hand onnearly every school and college where architecture was taught. Sullivanthe defeated and discredited Great Emancipator reduced and impover-ished still carried on after his fashion and shortly before his melancholydeath in 1924 wrote The utobiographyof an Idea in which is set downthe story of his conflict with the organized forces of conservatism and re-action a human document of the highest interest and importance.

Frank Lloyd Wright a pupil but not an imitator of Sullivan founda measure of release for his highly individual talent in the Middle Westand on the Pacific coasL ~ showing he made there won him the com-


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R TROSP T lthoughSullivan and Wright had little influence on merican

archi tecture of the post-World s-Fair period - given over almost completely s it w s to those forms of eclecticism favored by McKim, Meadand White and other leading practitioners throughout the East - theirexample w s followed in Europe to such purpose that modernisticarchitecture all the way from the Rhine to Stockholm and Helsingforsis known s the American style. This came about in the following way:Certain of the foreign commissioners to the Chicago Exposition, to -gether with visiting European architects, sated with that variety of classicism of which the White City was so luxurious a growth, perverselycentered their admiration on Sullivan s Transportation Building, withits golden portal, the like of which they had never seen before. The samefresh note o f originalitr appeared also in his uditoriumBuilding andSchiller Theatre and they returned to their own countries with photographs of these buildings and plaster casts of Sullivan s ornament foruse in museums and schools. Subsequently drawings and photographsof \Vright s work were published in Germany in typographically admirable editions and attracted wide and favorable attention among architects. These influences had an effect analogous to that of Vitruvius uponthe architecture of the Italian Renaissance, and of Palladia and Vignoleupon English eighteenth-eentury architecture. That is to say, the modern-istic movement in Europe received the stamp of Sullivan and Wright bysomewhat the same process and to something the same extent that ItalianRenaissance architecture received the stamp of Imperial Rome and English Renaissance architecture of Italy; and although the modernistic movement in Europe has advanced on lines of its own, that stamp remainsindelible.

Indeed, this European trend toward organic or functional architecture (in contradistinction traditional or eclectic) is of such vitality andhas grown to such proportions that it is now producing important reper-cussions in the United States, -the land of its birth - or perhaps it wouldbe more correct to say that the same forces which operated there are nowoperating here, the only difference being a difference in tim Be that as it


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24 TH FROZ N FOUNT INthought-out ideas an d deeply held convictions s have gone t o t he s ha pi ngof its European correlative. s therefore under suspicion o f b ei ng justanother twist which eclecticism has t ak en - the latest architectural f sh-ion r at he r t ha n t he first strivings toward a style

One knows what privation and suffering Sullivan went through forthe sake of his Ide a; one s s ur e t ha t Wright and Le Corbusier - whom Itake s representative of the European functionalists - would make an yrenunciation rather than build counter those principles which they advocate an d w hi ch t hey t ry t o ma ke their buildings represent but th e chiefpractitioners of latter-day American modernism thou.gh they may seembe doing the same sort of thing a nd d oin g it with even greater expertness.appear to be u nd er n o such compulsion; they tu m aside they wink theother eye on occasion like augurs ministering to a religion i n w hi ch theybelieve no t because they cannot help it but because it s both fashionableand profitable. They are still eclectics according to the strict definition ofth e tenn The true functionalist on t he other hand s rooted in an ideat o wh ic h it s impossible for hi m ever to be false; he mu st t ry a t all timesand at all costs to honor with use those first principles upon w hi ch t he architectural art is founded - p r i n i p l ~ which. however various their application suffer no change from age age.

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IVTH SK YSCR PER

F LL our architectural flora, the skyscraper alone is truly indigenous totheAmerican soil. Our churches, our

court houses, libraries, museums, banks, are for the most part uninspired adaptations of stale European originals, t ~ ~ ~ but the skyscraper is n tur l growth and a symbol ofthe American spi ri t in its more obvious aspect that

ruthless, tireless, assured energism delightedly proclaiming, What agreat boy am I The skyscraper is important both s an architecturaland s a social manifestation; le t us therefore seek to discover and de

. fine those forces and influences which have shaped and are in processof shaping it as it exists today.

On the social and economic forces I shall not dwell further than toremove a few misconceptions. It is popularly supposed tha t the skyscraperarose s the result of the impossibility of lateral expansion, lower Man


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TH FROZ N FOUNT INmetaphysical no t physical while an aerial view of New York reveals ata glance large tracts of low-lying buildings in and around the Wall Streetdistrict which if built to t he h ei gh t of a few more stories would accommodate a population vastly larger than the skyscrapers harbor. It s a factthat t he a ve ra ge h ei gh t of buildings on Manhattan island is lower thanthat of most European capitals where the skyscraper s a thing unknown- they have a greater populat ion per acre than New York.The r ison tr of the skyscraper is therefore not physical but psychological: it arose i n answer to the de si re of the herd t o b ec ome a s up er herd - of spot-cards to become face-cards. Skyscrapers appear only and always on those sacred acres which for some mysterious reason have becometh e blue heaven of the business man. High buildings in preferred areas

. owe their existence to exactly t he same c au se as high prices for front-rowseats at a show.But from another point of view the skyscraper came into being s theresult of an effort to ge t the better of the real-estate agent and the tax collector by expanding in the free dimension capturing and turning to profitmore than an equitable share of air and sunlight. Ugly s the word maysound the skyscraper s a product of human greed thus standing in idealsymbolic relation to the country and to the times. I hasten to add however that this motive s no more ignoble than those which have inspiredarchitectural masterpieces canonized by universal acclamation an d sanctified by time. Motives - even one s own - will not bear too close examination. Some of the most magnificent products of th e building impulsethroughout the ages were inspired by emotions far different than thosewhich they excite in t he b ehol de r: for example blood-l ust - witness t heColosseum; fear of invasion - witness the Great Wall of China; personalpride - witness the Mausoleum of Hadrian; the love of luxury - witness the Therm


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\

THE SKYS R PERuct of sharp practice an enclosure for the transaction of sharp bargainsso long as we do not kid ourselves into calling it a Cathedral of Commerceand try to make it look like something other than it is Hypocrisy in ar-chitecture is successful only with the undiscerning while simple honestysomehow always satisfies and gives forth overtones of beauty.

PHYSICAL FACTORSOf the physical factors which have gone to the shaping of the sky-

scraper the first and of the first importance IS steel frame construction that system of riveted together vertical and horizontal members insur-ing strength lightness rigidity stability; a skyscraper being as said beforea truss placed upright. Co equal with this in the sense that vertical build-ing would have been impossible without it is the fast safe passenger ele-vator the very piston of the machine. And the bringing of this to itspresent state of perfection involved mechanical difficulties far greater.than the mere piling of story upon story once the trick was learned. Men-tion must also be made of the ingenious methods now in use for the sink-ing of foundations to great depths for without this Chicago could neverhave stretched its neck as high as New York the early Chicago skyscrapershaving been floated on rafts so to speak on a lake of mud with perilousresults. And finally the draining heating lighting water fire andwind proofing of these buildings had to be competently taken care of inorder to make them possible. The aggregate of inventive and mechanicalability involved in the production of a modern American skyscraper isperhaps greater than in any other work of man.

A conditioning factor in skyscraper construction has arisen in certainlocalities in recent years through legislative action designed to diminishencroachments upon the ethical r ights of property owners and the rightof everyone to a modicum of light and air. In New York this has resultedin the set back type of skyscraper. The French Mansard roof was the prod-uct of a similar necessity legislative no t structural or ~ t h e t i Occa-


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play of l ight and shade; but without skilled treatment of some sort thesebuildings have the look of gigantic bureaus with partly pulled-outdrawers.

.STHETIC FACTORSIt will be clear from the foregoing that the skyscraper has been shaped

and developed by practical, not


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I

THE SKYS R PERViollet-Ie-Duc in his iscourses on rchitecture affirms that it is the

business of the architect to fulfil with scrupulous exactness all the conditions imposed by necessity, and to employ materials with due regard totheir qualities and capacities. Sullivan laid firm hold of the fact that liew materials andbuilding methods demand new architecturalforms for their expression: is my belief,he \Tote, that it is of the very essence of everyproblem tha t i t contains its own solution. Andhaving stated the problem of the tall officebuilding in winged words, he solved it in ponderable materials, even going so far s to invent a style of ornament appropriate to and expressive of the nature of baked clay. He did thisso successfully that it was regarded by his contemporaries s his most important contributionto an American style, much to Sullivan s chagrin, who saw his ornament being imitated andhis sound architectural ideas ignored. It wasthis, perhaps, which prompted him to declarethat it would be to ou r


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3 TH FROZ N FOUNT INand deadly world of the American draughting room of his day, wherecopyists slaved over plates and photographs under the delusion that theywere practicing the ar t of building.

Cass Gilbert, an architect of great ability, bu t not so bold and deepa thinker s Sullivan, conceived of the skyscraper s a Cathedral of Commerce. The Woolworth Building and the New York Life Building areembodiments of this idea. He argued, probably, s follows: Today wemake a religion of business; therefore why not t reat the mart more orless l ike a temple, lavishing upon it all our best? The Gothic style lendsitself admirably to modern uses, for it is pre-eminently vertical the verything called for in a skyscraper; moreover, it is infinitely flexible, adaptedto all uses, and unencumbered by canons of proportion s the classic orders are.

The Woolworth Building, which struck this new keynote, is certainly in every inch a proud and soaring thing and remains today in many respects the finest embodiment of the skyscraper idea. It so stimulated thearchitects throughout the country to emulation and to imitation that Gilbert s must be reckoned the next important influence after. Sullivan s onskyscraper design. But in spite of the admirable quality of his work s regards disposition of parts, line, and mass, and more than all else its essential practicality it is based on false premises so far s the use of Gothicforms and ornamentation is concerned. We do not and cannot think interms of medi


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6

THE P l c r u ~ AND THE UTlLITARJAI {THE I ~ TRJIDUNf I)UILDING AND THF:NEW Yt::K EVE N1Nq NEWS [)Ull..D1Nq

THE SKYS R PERand from a strange source: The Loser Wins might be the title of itsstory.

The Chicago Tribune Building (Illustration 6) , widely advertised asthe most beautiful skyscraper in the world, was built according to the design submitted by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood in a worldwide competition of which theywere the winners. It s in apseudo-Gothic style, a pieceof magnificent but irrelevantstage scenery, the limestone casing made to look as picturesquely m e i ~ v l s possible,the crowning lantern flankedby fiying buttresses which castinteresting shadows but do notbuttress, being like handspressed to a bewildered headengaged in thinking, So thiss Chicago How did I get here ,I wonder.

The second prize design,by Eliel Saarinen, a Finnisharchitect, w s s different as possible from that of his successful rivals:simpie, direct, unpretentious, with a square tower which just stoppe butwith an indefinable felicity, by reason of subtle diminishments.

Sullivan hailed. this design s a return to, and a carrying forward of,those principles of which he had been the advocate and exemplar; BertramGoodhue, himself a competitor, who had had an advance view of al l th edrawings, told me that Saarinen's design was in a class by itself and superior to all the others, and such was the consensus of opinion, professionaland lay. Observe the workings of poetic justice: though the victory was

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THE FROZEN FOUNT INin the spirit of Saarinen s design and as unlike their own previous effortas can well be imagined? Destitute of ornament except about the entrance,and of any architectural grace save its soaring verticals and the finely disposed, proportionately related parts, this building somehow succeeds inmaking its neighbors, the Chrysler and the Chanin buildings, look a littlebit silly by comparison. It does not seem to stand on tiptoe blowing asilver trumpet, as does the one, no r to give a false effect of massiveness,as does the other , by means of squat pilasters and artificial buttresses. Itassumes to be only what it is: a work of engineering, a cliff-like humanhive, a monster of the mere market.

Saarinen s influence on skyscraper architecture has been pronounced,particularly in Chicago, where his formula has been much followed, although he merely brought to a focus certain tendencies which had alreadybeen making themselves felt: simple rectilinear masses, the vertic als rising sheer without dissenting lines, the elimination of cornices, and a general absence of ornament except it be integral in contradistinction toapplied

The final influence to be noted is that of Hugh Ferris, who is not inthe strict sense an architect at all, but an architectural renderer. Hisarchitectural sense and his aesthetic sensitiveness are, however, so superiorto that of most of the architects who employ him to make pictures ofthe ir bui ldings that i t is often highly disillusioning to compare his drawings with their originals, though the architect s was of course the enormously more difficult problem.

Ferris served his masters so well that he himself enslaved some ofthem, judging by the increasing tendency to make skyscrapers look asmuch as possible like his imaginative drawings. His book, The Metropo-lis Tomorrow appears to be exerting an influence on skyscraper design analogous to that which Piranesi s prison etchings exercised uponGeorge Dance s design for Old Newgate. Turning the pages of this bookwe may read not only the last skyscraping word, but the one which has.not yet been uttered. Both Ferris and Wright have conceived of the sky-scraper of the future as having walls of metal and glass, hung as it were,


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SOCI L F CTORSHaving traced the evolution of the skyscraper even beyond the point

at which it stands today I might here make an end but this survey wouldbe superficial did I not now continue in a somewhat different strain.

nincorrigible symbolist I cannot bu t attach symbolical significanceto the fact that one may turn page after page of The etropolisof To-morrow without coming upon a single human figure: here is pictured aworld from which humanity appears to have perished done to death by

of his own conception of an all glass and metal skyscraper have alreadybeen published in the architectural magazines.

Such a next step would be entirely consistent an d logical: glass s oneof the few building materials still in process of development and therehas been an increasing tendency to increase window area at the expenseof wall surface. A building all of shining metal an d glass would constitutea more honest dramatization of the essential nature of the skyscraperthan those now in vogue since it s not in essence . a masonry s t r u ~ t u rthough always made to appear s though it were. The lofty rectilinearsteel frames of skyscrapers outlined in sable and orange against the ceru-lean New York sky are to me always a marvel and a delight; but no soonerhave they pu t on the ir masonry overcoats than the chief element of theircharm has vanished that strong lightness strong are they tha t the irstructural limit of height far overpasses the economic limit and so lightare they that the finished edifice weighs less than the rock removed to giveit foothold and cellarage. Because they are thus strong and light it is partof the business of the architect to make them look so bu t this appears tobe the last thing that occurs to him to do. On the contrary he continuesto try to make them look s heavy and spineless as possible. The Wool-worth Building gives something of the desired impression; also by reasonof its shining verticals the Empire State Building tower. The idea how-ever s probably capable of still more eloquent expression.

33HE SKYS R PER

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But putting aside all sociological, moralistic, and narrowly


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VR GUL TING L I N E S

HAVE dwelt at such length u po n t he skyscraper becauseit so a cc ur at e a .mirror of th e national consciousnessreflecting as it does our irrepressible energy ou r loveof igness our predatory habit an d the triumph - forth e time being at least - of the industrial i dea l o ve rthe agricultural: of the corporation over the grange.

Besides it is the o nl y a rc hi te ct ur al e nt it y w hi ch has undergone a consistent evolution in a d efi ni te d ir ec ti on : Everything else represents onlyanother turn in a circle of ephemeral fashions reminiscent o f some pastnever truly our ow n and l ea di ng n ow he re e xc ep t t o that limbo whereinare gathered th e architectural blunders of all our yesterdays. T o paraphrase a stanza of Vi ll on s famous ballade:

Tell me now in what hidden way isCarpenter s Classic Wooden Greek.

What of Eastlake? Where today

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A work of architecture may be significant organic dramatic but itwill fail of being a work o f a rt unless it be also schem tic What is themeaning of this word in this connection?

It means a systematic disposition of parts according to some co ordi-nating principle. Only by schem tiz tion can multiplicity be resolved intounity and unity split up into multiplicity without itself being lost in theprocess: like the string in a pearl necklace or the movement of the batonof an orchestra leader schematization is an agent of unity the preserver

But this merry go round could not go on revolving endlessly andafter a few more turns represented by McKim Mead and Whitism BeauxArtism Austro Urbanistic Modernism we are at last headed in the direc-tion of true functionalism: toward the development of an architecturewhich shall be above all things indigenous and organic. This tendency

. first revealed in the skyscraper is of fast gathering momentum it is evenmanifest in the archi tectural schools and colleges those strongholds ofconservatism. While it is true s said before that the movement here isunder suspicion of being only another twist which eclecticism has takenit can now never turn backward to mere copyism of the past.

Confronted with some of the sins committed in the name of the newarchitectural liberty it is impossible not to yield to apprehens ion andeven to regret . But this is futile : the wild and wanton experimentationof the ignorant and incompetent freed of all restraint is an inescapablephase we must go through Having thrown away his water wings of prece-dent either the tyro must lea rn to swim or he must drown. This bookhas been written in the hope tha t it may aid and inspire those who arestruggling in these perilous seas forlorn; so having given that backwardglance so clarifying to forward vision I shall proceed to a discussion ofregul ting lines

t

R GUL T ING L IN SWith Richardson Romanesque I fear

They are gone the way of the sham antique -Oh where are the styles of yester year?

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TH FROZ N FOUNT INis an agent of schematization an aid to unity. In music the key or chosenseries of notes in which a piece is written, also its division into beats measures and bars operate to the same end. Quite in analogy with this selective process and the dividing of time into larger and lesser units space


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th e square the two dimensional correlatives of t he sp he re , t he t etr ah edron, and the cube . Their employment for this purpose yields asatisfaction of a spiritual order perhaps on account of their r hetyp lcharacter, the archetypal world being the spiritual world. Why or in whatsense these figures are a rc he ty pa l I need no t go into here; suffice it tosay that the circle, the equilateral triangle, and the square are regulatinglines in the architecture of the human temple itself, as Illustration 8shows at a glance.

Other regulating lines sometimes used are the right-angled isoscelestriangle and the so-called .. Egyptian triangle, an isosceles triangle hav- .ing a ratio of base to altitude as eight to five; also, the Pythagorean marriage triangle, whose sides are represented by the numbers three, four,and five, used anciently - and even today-for the establishment of a

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R GUL T ING L IN S

7

IX-..../

1:Z-o:: ttM:: :; FIFTHPlAN OFACHUR CH l V VILI ARD DEHONHECC>UR.T-R.EQULATING LlNEHi THEIR MQl T ,s IMPLE ORM~ r ~ :7 sUMlt Ot7FlRECfAN


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R GUL TING LIN S a work of architecture is in the well-known phrase, .. roz n mu-

sic, it is so only by reason of a harmonious relation subsisting betweenits various parts - otherwise it is only frozen noise. A realization of thisfact prompted me to try to determine the important proportions of theNew York Central railway station at Rochester, New York, by means ofnumerical ratios expressing the consonant intervals in music - moreparticularly the octave, the fifth, the subminor seventh, 1 : 2 2 : 3 4 : 7- in conjunction with the square, the circle, and the equilateral triangle.Illustration 9 indicates the way in which this was done. The length of thewaiting-room, measured on the floor is twice its width, and the heightfrom window to window) is half the width. The parallelogram definedby the walls above the floor is slightly more subtle, the rat io being 4 : 7.Five equal circles - remotely suggestive of the driving wheels of somegiant locomotive - establish the main divisions the a9ide, three beinggiven to the waiting-room, and one to each of the wings, which thus define squares. This ratio between the ends and the center, 2 : 3 expressesthe musical interval of the fifth, and the octave 1: 2 occurs in thefa9ide also, in the relation of the principal voids to the principal solids,since the great windows are twice as broad as the piers which separatethem. An equilateral triangle is the determining factor in certain subdivisions both of the waiting-room and the a9ide, the top of the wainscotbeing used as a base line in the one case, and the top of the water-table inthe other; for it may be stated as a general rule that whenever three important points of a composition coincide approximately or exactly) withthe three vertices of an equilateral triangle, it makes for beauty of proportion.

The employment of p r llel i gon ls as regulating lines constitutesanother easily applied and useful method of relating the various parts ofa design to one another: The principal mass, either in plan or in elevation, being expressed by a rectangle, the diagonal of that rectangle andits perpendicular become the measure of such secondary elements as pa


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TH FROZ N FOUNT INbodily structure whereby a long, thin person has attenuated hands andfeet, whereas i the figure short and stout, these members will correspond with it Illustration 10 .

It must not be thought thatthese aids to schematization bymeans of regulating lines are mutu-ally exclusive: they can made towork together like balls in the handof a skilful juggler, bu t the mannerand extent of their use must be determined by each one for himself. Abuilding planned and proport ionedin accordance with geometrical synopses of this order will have theappearance of being well and reasonably made, well unified, well modulated, not the product of chance orcapriciousness. Mathematical law,having permeated it, will shinethrough it, just s it does throughthe creations of nature, which arenothing i f not mathematical.

DYN MI SYMMETRY

The foregoing aids to schematization all come under the generalhead of st tic symmetry There is, however, another system of regulatinglines known s dynamic symmetry, with which the name of Jay Hambidge is indissolubly associated because discovered - or, s he claims, -discovered- and developed by him. Howard Giles, one of its best-knownliving exponents , defines dynamic symmetry as a system for controllingspace relations - a means whereby are achieved rela ted areas orspaces. It s more subtle than the linear-unit system in that it involves thenext higher dimension, and more vit l on account of its close accord


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44evidenced and made available for ;:esthetic uses by translating the spiralfrom a curved form into an angular one, s shown in A, Illustration From this it is bu t a step to the creation of a series of rectangles the diagonals and the perpendiculars to the diagonals of which are radii vec

tors at right angles to one anotherThis yields a double series of linesin continued proportion each linebearing the same relation to itspredecessor s the one followingbears to it. So far s design is concerned, the curve of the spiral canbe dispensed with, but thoughgone, let it not be forgotten; itsfelt presence imparts to dynamically symmetrical compositionstheir indefinable satisfactoriness.It well to insist on this point, for,immersed in a forest of .. root-rectangles, reciprocals, whirling squares, and the like, there isdanger of not seeing the wood forthe trees, and so missing thetere and elegant simplicity of thewhole system.

Let us now proceed to the consideration of the rectangles themselves.They are called root-rectangles because although in general their endsand sides are incommensurable with one another line rly the squ reson the ends and sides re commensurable and expressible by quantita-tively small ratios. The names root-two, root-three, root-four, and rootfive have been appl ied to these rectangles for the reason tha t the squareon the end is respectively one half, one third, one fourth and one fifth ofthe area of the square on the side. The ratios expressing the relation


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45

..,............... ~ - t - . . . . . : : : > . . . . . . . . , , ~ - - I - ~ I < : : L l _ a L ~ ~ ~

t S t J ~ I V I S K l N c1 RCOI -RECI ANQI.; I

R GUL TING LIN Ssymmetry does not make use of any beyond the fourth - the root-fiverectangle.

All root-rectangles have the following properties in common, besidesthe commensurability of their squares: The perpendicular to the diagonal, prolonged until it meets the long side of the rectangle, is itself thediagonal of a reciprocal rectangle similar to the whole; repeated withinthe rectangle, these exhaust the area without a remainder. Lines drawnparallel with the sides of the rectangle through (a) the intersection ofthe perpendicular to the diagonal and the long side, and b throughthe i ~ t e r s e c t i o n of the diagonal with its perpendicular the eye ofthe spiral , yield rectangles similar to the whole and exhaust the areawithout a remainder. All this, confusing in verbal description, is clear

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use of another, the rectangle of the whirling squares, so called because itscontinued reciprocals C, Illustration 11 establish squares within therectangle. It is in a way a derivative of the root-five rectangle, to whichit is closely related.

Let us next learn how to construct these various rectangles. Theeasiest method would be to use a decimally divided scale, but it is the oneleast fitted to bring into relief and fix in the memory their properties. Theratios between the ends and sides expressed numerically are as follows:

Root-two : 1.4142~ o o t t h r : 1.732Root-four 1 : 2Root-five :2 236Whirling square 6 8

A better way, particularly for the beginner, is to develop the rectangles from the square - the egg from which they are all hatched - bythe use of the diagonal, since by these means they are perceivel to be members of an infinite series having common properties.

This is easily accomplished: The diagonal of each succeeding rectangle, beginning with the square, determines the long side of the next.That is to say, the diagonal of the square, revolved downward until itcoincides with the base forms the long side of a root-two rectangle whose

side is the side of the square. The diagonal of this rectangle, similarlyrevolved down to meet its base, yields the long side of a root-three rectangle, and so on, as shown in the upper figure of Illustration 12. Thelower figure shows the method of developing root-rectangles insi thesquare so clearly that it needs no verbal explanation. The root-four rectangle, being a double square, is established by a single semicircular

. sweep of the compass. There is a method of drawing a rootfive rectanglewhich is only one degree less simple, and yields, at the same time, thewhirling-square rectangle. This is shown in Illustration Let it be notedthat a whirling-square rectangle plus its reciprocal is a root-five rectangle:that is a root-five rectangle equals the area of a whirling-square rectanglehorizontal plus one perpendicular. A method of forming the root-five and


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TH E WATERFALL: AkD f-lWO RECTA 'lqu:1l-fE DIAOONAW wEU-D EF IN ED I Y THe R D f ~C f THE HOU.s E . rrAL.s O. ' ER.,JICALRmr-FI\JE RE crANQr E


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LADY qoLW E/CORt 'WHIRLING ~ U R E ID:1=ANGLE 'WlTH REPEATINqQUARE .1HElR.OIETUAPPINq miNCO C>Y THEHAT . HfADS AND H Irtf.FRONT-$' 01= THE FIqURES

THE QLITTE RlNq QOITEATmT-T O R.E CTANQLEINTER EC1 IQi,S OF DIACiaw AND P F R m D l ~ THE IDLE INW-RCDT-FOUrtRECTANqI.:E WITH

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R GUL TING LIN Sdivision of their areas by means of diagonals, perpendiculars, and so forthshould yield in every case a clearly traceable relation b et we en t hi s geometrical web and the main lines and masses of the composition?

The Hokusai print is a root-two rectangle with both diagonals fairlywell defined, particularly in t he lower h al f of the ir l en gt h b y the alignment of the house roofs and the central figure on the bridge - the onebearing a burden The limiting vertical line of the waterfall defines withfair exactness a root-five rectangle, and the overhanging cliff at th e rightechoes the line of the main diagonal Illustration 17

The dle Inn drawing s a double square, hence a root-four r e c ~ n g l ethe diagonal emphasized in the most positive manner by the streaks ofli ght in the sky and the silhouette of gateway and fence. The intersectionof the diagonal with its perpendicular at the left of the picture and of theperpendicular with the long side of the rectangle at the right yields verticals which coincide with major elements of the design Illustration 19) .

The Beardsley drawing s a whirling-square rectangle; the square isrepeated, top and bottom, and the area included in the overlapping of thetwo s so c lea rly de fine d by t he heads and shirt-fronts of the group ofLady Gold s attendant squires that the composition itself gives the c lu e t othis subdivision: all of the interest concentrated in this area, for it contains the heads and torsos of nine out of the ten figures. Lady Gold s handand t he h ea d of the muff-bearer define the diagonal Illustration 20

The fact that these drawings, done by a rtist s who ma de no use ofdynamic symmetry, submit themselves to a dynamically symmetrical synopsis is sure t o be interpreted by some readers as discrediting Mr. Ham-bidge s idea, but to me it seems a confirmation of it. I interpret it s meaning that the athetic intuition works mathematically and achieves, by itsown subterranean processes, and without the aid of calculation, the desiredresults. The question then naturallyarises: why have rules, and what gains there in knowing them?

To this there s an effective answer suggested by the sister art ofmusic. The natural-born composer will intuitively obey the gteat ge


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TH FROZ N FOUNT IN IF============================================= tlIunnecessary fumbling about,

and he would fall short ofhis highest potentiality ofself-expression. Now dynamicsymmetry bears much the

, same relation to the arts ofspace s does the science ofharmony to musical composition: On the purely creativeside it has only a negativevalue, being no substitute forinspiration or ideation - ou tof sows ears it will make nosilk purses. On the technicalside, however, it has a verydefinite value.

Let me attempt to demonstrate this by an examplefrom my own experience. Ihave a conception of a glit i I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ g s ~ i tering gate inspired by read-u ing ord Dunsany s one-act

play of this title, and I want to pu t my idea in the form of a d r a w i n g ~The general image s quite clear in my mind, but this does not tell mejust where, within the confines of my parallelogram, the great opening inthe wall of heaven would look best, nor what proportions would be mosthappy. Therefore I call dynamic symmetry to my aid, with the resultshown in Illustration in which the position and proportions havebeen determined by the intersections of diagonals and perpendicularswithin a root-two rectangle (Illustration 21). Of the rightness of thespace-relations arrived at by these means I leave the reader to judge,but if that judgment favorable - if the placing and spacing satisfy

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symmetry in the same spirit that a musical composer learns harmony - asa useful and necessary part of his equipment for self-expression. To thisend the essentials of the system in condensed and organized form, arecontained in the following four pages of diagrams Illustrations 3 2425, and 26 .

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R GUL TING LIN S 53


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THE APPUCATION OF AREAS vRffiT-Z RECTA iGIT- XSQUARE

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~ cr \..FIQ APPlICATION J l lIO O fCtI Ei1l C F l Z ~ 1 O A l ? f ] . \..nJAI I INq J NlJ}RECTANQULAR. AREAS MAY f i t E XHAlhS TED5V THE APPUCATIOt-l Of OTHER. M[A . ANDTHE RFtuLTAHT D R O l m T 1 0 H A L ~ R 1 i 5 UtlID S E L E M E N T ~ OF crJ lqH T H U ~THE QUARE OM THE END OFAroJr-lWOm:CfAl';qLE. APPLIED TO ITJ MEA. FAl l t~ H O l G t AND THF PARr .LFITOVER., COMTJO-ED Cf A ,s QL{ARF AND A Rcr)T-TWO RFCf-ANCilE (FI(11). 1 F T H E ~ A M E EJnsOJJARE lSE APDLIED THECil1ifR.:END. tSb 1> 10 0v fICLAP THE FI 145 1 ,st:)UAQC.THEAQEA U DIVIDED Il lTOTHREE SQJARE,S AND THREE RillT-1 \l.?O QI -(TANqiEst (FIG 2.) JF ...........01 n= VZ ClT H E ~ O i 1 H . s l I : : f a A ~ ~ ~ r l ~ I2E CT AHCjLE t: fArfUID. THE l . - -4 )r o ~ AND ()iE J


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VIISOMETRIC PERSPECTIVERCHITECTURE having to do pre eminently withsolids the architectural designer should accustom him-self to think always in terms of three dimensions ratherthan of two. ndbecause perspective is the science ofrepresenting solids in plane projection three dimen-sions through the mediumship of two it should

form part of his equipment no less than the knowledge and employ-ment of regulating lines.

Many palpable faults and shortcomings of contemporary architec-tural practice can be traced to the all but universal custom of designingin elevation instead of in perspective to the lack three dimensionalvisualization a power which the practice of perspective brings. Throughlack of mastery of the method time pressure or sheer indolence it toooften happens that a building is developed two dimensionally and the

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renderer or perspective expert has come to stand in much the same re-lation to the designer as does the song plugger employed by musichouses to the composer of songs.

The advantage of a more l iberal use of perspective than is commonamong architects generally was brought home to me only after I had en-tered the field of theatrical production. For a stage scene does not lenditself as readily as does a building to representat ion by means of planelevation and section; it can be adequately represented only in modelform. Models however are difficult to make cumbersome and ~ x p -sive; above all they take time and in the theater of all places every-thing must be done at top speed. Now the perspective drawing of a scenethough not fulfilling all the uses of a model can sometimes be made toserve as its substitute. It possesses this advantage over a model that hu-man figures and stage properties are so easily represented an importantconsideration when it is realized that a scene exists solely for the actorsthat it is not so much a matter of background as of environment theproperties being often of more importance than the backdrop. Under thestimulus of necessity I acquired what might be called the. perspectivehabit and I am sure it would be an excellent thing if architects wereforced from the very start to dramatize their conceptions in this wayrather than by the plan and elevation method.

But the ord inary type of perspective drawing is both difficult andawkward to make and sometimes involves problems in projection noteasily solved. This is the chief reason why the ar t is not more universallypracticed. There is however a type of perspective known as isometricwhich is rapid easy direct; shows things truly and clearly is .. of equalmeasure in all three dimensions and requires no other paraphernaliathan working drawings require.

Isometric perspective might be a great aid to the architectural de-signer as it was to me in my theatrical work first as an easilyachieved projection of the mental image conveying the sense of three-dimensionality without going through the tedious process of point per-

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Having established the threeperpendiculars represented by avertical and the two lines subtend-ing the chosen angle and corre-sponding to the dimensions ofheight length and breadth, eachbecomes a measuring line uponwhich and by means of which the va-rious elements of a design may be

will be expressed by the two sidesof an angle chosen arbitrarily rang-ing from a minimum of ninety to amaximum of one hundred and fiftydegrees.

Because the triangles in com-mon use by draughtsmen are of thirty-sixty and forty five degreesthe angles usually selected are suchas can be worked with these twotriangles in conjunction with aT square. The angles shown in Illus-trations 28 and 30 are the ones mostcommonly employed but the twoothers shown in Illustration 29 areuseful for special purposes whereit is desired to make the p n clearand prominent.

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--for convenience in a reading: the drawing s to scale on all perpendiculars- of equal measure, as the name itself implies.

The approved method of procedure s to establish first the p lan inperspective, then the main rectilinear solids, subjecting these afterwards

; = = = ~ = = = = = ~ = = = = i I to such subdivisionsor additions s the ne-

.rm> cessities of the case de-~ = = = ~ = = = ~ = = = ~ mand, proceeding always from the larger to the lesser, from the 1 ~ L simple to the more_ intricate. Pursuant of

~ ~ d [ ~ - - - - - - - - : ] ~ . ~ this method, a circles first established asa square with a widthequal to the circle'sdiameter; this squares translated into anoctagon, within whichand tangential to it,an ellipse, representing the circle in perspective, can easily bedrawn free-hand (Illustration 32) . nHlustration 33, representing a chair in isometric

perspective, the dot ted lines indicate the preliminary construction andmeasuring lines. Confusion s avoided by always beginning with the perspective pl n and building upward from that into the vertical dimension.

The one-hundred-and-thirty-five-degree and the one-hundred-andfifty-degree isometric perspectives (lllustrations 30 and 31) correspond tothe single-vanishing-point, or parallel perspective, so called. This type of


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WALTER H M P E N ~ PJ2 0DlXna l DEtKjER.AC aAUDE c QAqr:a l. AdJ5elevation. he objection to it dwells in the fact that this third dimension, if equal measure is adhered to, appears excessive, and the dis-


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WALTE2..HAMl DENt P\2 CDl JCTIa I CYl2Al 10 RAC d. AUDE ~ R A A J : O i k K36

dimension one half of what according to the isometric rule they should

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._. - ~ ~ _ ---__WALTE\2 H AMPDE N;s PRODUC r1ON r j E Q q E ~ - C l A U D E )I1A i[x)N.An:lit

37useful in my work in the theater for by these means I was able to m ak ea wholly int elligibl e and quite realistic picture of a stage-setting with


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-'--'-'-..1W LT H.6J1I'CN PkCOUc:Ia-r cr C'Y2ANO 5El2(jEEAC 'CLAUDE ~ ~ C O N A J c h l

38

made according to this method as is also the Geometrica l Garden ..which heads the penultimate chapter of this book.

Illustrations 35 to 38 made for Walter Hampden s yrano de er-

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39 because it so well shows forth the value of isometric perspective as aorrel tor of plan elevation and section making the whole intelligibleat a glance

ith the aid of this exposition and these examples anyone with alittle practice should be able to master this useful and amusing art


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VIIORN M NT

CONOMIC and structural necessity are at last drivingus toward the development of an architecture the formsof which will be determined by their functions s in the .case of a machine. ndbecause it s the machine idealwhich avowedly according to its own high priests in-spires this architecture everything not directly con-

tributory to some kind of usefulness is theoretically at least tabu.For this reason an outstanding characteristic of the best of the new archi-tecture s the general absence of ornament for ornament serves no use-ful practical purpose other than to delight the eye and a science whichhas electrocuted Santa Claus concerns itself with other things thandelight.

The machine ideal applied to architecture save in its most util ita-


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l nament an arrested song a frozen dance? At any rate the desire for deco-ration is as primitive and deep-seated arising from a psychological ratherthan from a physical necessity - and this is the reason why ornament has

ever been and must ever be a mirror of the individual and racial consciousness. The ornament in use today whether derived or invented reveals that consciousness to be afflicted by e thetic sterility - so in its un

ORN M NTyond mere structural expressiveness. Our age requires no less thanantecedent ages an ornamental mode

Ornament springs from an impulse no less natural and primitivethan singing and dancing. It may even be the same impulse for is not or-

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THE FROZEN FOUNT INT he r ea li za ti on of th is n ee d d aw ne d on me first some t we nt y years

ago, when I was c al le d upon to d es ig n a railway s ta ti on for my n at iv e cit yof Rochester, Ne w York. Though I ha d ne ver b ee n averse t o d ip pin ginto th e d us t b in o f eyer sHandbook of Ornament in this case itseemed i mp er at iv e t ha t n o o rn am en t sh ou ld be e mp loy ed wh ic h antedated steam transportation. There was none: the refore I was c on fr ont edw it h t he necessity o f e li mi na ti ng ornament altogether or of inventing it.

The first seemed too stark an alternative, an d the second too difficultfor a talent atrophied by that o rd er o f parasitism practiced by me in th epast. What I did, therefore, was to deal with some o f the canonical ornamental motifs with a free hand - much s a jazz-band leader might syncopate or otherwise distort the masterpieces of Beethoven or Bach Illustration 40) .

This compromise, though moderately successful, was so f ar f rom satisfying that I thereafter undertook a searching inquiry into th e whole subject. One of th e first things which impressed me was that all goo d orna ment readily submits itself to a simple geometrical synopsis; that muchof it, indeed l ik Gothic tracery an d Moor ish d ec or at io n - consists

solely of the combination, repetition, or symmetrical assemblage of th emost elementary geometrical forms, and that all floral an d free-spreadingornament has a mathematical substructure - th e roc k c an exist withoutthe lichen, but the lichen cannot exist without the rock.In mathematics, then, I seemed to h ave f ou nd th e source of all ornament whatsoever, and it was there that I decided t o pla nt my metaphysical spade. Moreover, it s the thing mpst native to th e modern temper:ours s pre-eminently the age of mathematics; it is t he o ne subject that suniversally t au gh t; i t has given us ou r control of natural forces; it s themagician s wand without which our workers of magic, be they bankers,engineers, physicists, inventors; c ou ld n ot perform their tricks. Of coursethis s nothing new: mathematics has long been made to serve man s uses,but never so universally or so successfully s now, threatening to swallowall other knowledges s fast s they assume organized form. :Moreover,

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catchwords. In brief, the modern mind is as definitely centered on invention and discovery, of which mathematics is the guiding light, as ever themedia :val mind was centered on Christ, the Virgin, the disciples, and thesaints; and just as the cathedrals were decorated with their images, by aparity of reasoning mathematics should be made to furnish forth an ornamental mode for the modern world.

Such was my conclusion, shared, I found afterwards, by Ruskin, whosaid: I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is ingeometrical color mosaic, and that much might result from taking upthat mode of design. But my position was not unlike that of Watts, who,having noted that the expansive force of steam was sufficient to blow theiron cover off a tea-kettle, had not yet devised a way whereby it couldbe made to run an engine. My idea was sufficiently sound, bu t how couldit be developed practically?

Keats dictum .. Beauty is Truth; Truth Beauty, gave me the clue.Because mathematical truth is absolute within its own l imits I had onlyto discover some method of translation of this truth to the mind intobeauty to the eye In the course of time I discovered several. These I havedescribed in Projective Ornament and, as new possibilities unfolded, incertain essays in Architecture and Democracy and The New Image ButI now feel that my explanations were unclear and my illustrations notsufficiently convincing, and that the whole matter should be formulatedanew. I hope that the already initiated reader will bear with me, therefore, if I repeat myself, on the assurance that from this time forth Inever will speak word.

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~ l N b D WAnING I N s b M N I ~ THEWHITE KNqHT TRACI THE K N I q H T ~ TOUR

MAGIC L INES IN MAGIC SQUARESThe three mathematical sources from which I was able to derive orna

ment were magic paths in magic s q ~ r s the Platonic solids, and the diagrammatic representations of the regular hypersolids of four-dimensionalspace. My first experiments w er e w it h m ag ic s qu ar es b ec au se they constitute such a c on sp ic uo us ins ta nc e of the intrinsic harmony of number of mathematical truth.

A magic square is a numerical acrostic; a progression of numbers usually arithmetical arranged in square form in such a manner that

those in each band whether horizontal, vertical or diagonal shall alwaysform the same sum. Every magic square contains a m ag ic path disco\ erable by tracing the numbers in their original and natural sequence fromce ll to cell and back again to the initial number. This is called the m gicline Such a line makes, of necessity, a pattern interesting always andsometimes beautiful as well. Here is the raw material of ornament: in thisway the c ha sm between mathematical truth and visible beauty may bebridged. It remains only to intensify and utilize this beauty - to deal with

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16 3 2 135 10 11 B:> 6 7 124- IS 14 1

Z 7 65 5 11- 3 B

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THe mUB MAQIC LINE SroUND I)Y F O L L O ~ H G 1t-lEN U M f > ~ I S WITH AN INTEQ.-

.t5 < 2Z 157f B Z1 14 27 Z D 1 19e .Ie 5 15 611 1- 17 .10 23

15 10 3 61 S 16 914 n 2 71 B 13 12

COMPlJITSD X5 /QWAPE AND r r ~MAqIC l INE ~ M T l r n THE 1 2 t>t6JAflE DY M E A N ~Q; D l ~ t K U l C E 1 6THE VKANTCCD.j oF :WHICH ARE PJI..JH) 5Y = 5 9

T I ? A N t F E ~ I I N i NUM SI:Qs'FtK:XiastJIDE 10 INSIrt :)X3 Qy AQE AND IT ~ MAGIC JJNEIN -mE M.ANNE'12 ~ H C J w N RJ1GME D bY THE .fAME' METHODDlFFEREfIT ~ l C IN TIiE ~ M f ~ R E

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ing of the first nine digits, three in each row, with a magic sum of 15t is constructed according to the following method, applicable to all oddnumber squares:

The numbers are first written in their natural order, in three rowsof three each, so that the hole

1 , ~ t 4 - 1 5 forms a square . Parallel diagonal I : : ~ ~ I I - S lines a re then drawn between theJ i I Z . 6 numbers with the effect of form-; : I ~ ~ I I ing rectangular cells, every alter-I [ nate cell being a blank. In the

~ b diagonal square of the same num-r '-' 'IIi I i ~ z ber of cells as there are numbers, ~ of which five cells are already: I ~ ~ X filled and the remaining fourP o TJ I TI I MS W ~ empty, these latter are filled, andI I ~ ~ ~ I ~ . I the magic square formed, by trans-1 I A J) ferring the four numbers remaining on the outside of this square tOI2J'lAMEtiTAL [)ANoS DEVELOPED FkCMTHE MAQIC UNE OF JX b ~ the corresponding position inside

and opposite42 - as though

rotated in the third dimension. The process is clearlyshown in Illustration 41, and the resultant magic lineobtained by following the numbers in their naturalorder.

The ornamental band in Illustration 42 is directlyderived from this line. Four of them, arranged about acommon center, yield the pavement pattern shown inthe headpiece to the next succeeding chapter. I madethis magic line of 3 x 3, translated into a free-handcurve as shown in Illustration 8 and given the form ofa Celtic interlace, do service as a ventilating grille in the ceiling of theRochester Chamber of Commerce Illustration 43), and I was much

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Z3 J 11 6 251 5 17 12J9 IJ 4 714 Zl 16lZO J5 8

ment He appeared to feel that I had cheated because I had not used acrib. Two other decorative uses of this l ine are shown in Illustration 44.

There is another method of magic-square formation productive ofwhat are known as knight s-move squares, so called because their magicpath conforms to the knight s move on a chess-board - two squares forward and one to right or left. Examples of these knight s-move squaresare shown in Illustration 45, one of 5 x 5 the magic line of which supplies the motif for the enclosing border, and the other of 8 x 8 whose lineis developed into the book cover design shown in Illustration 44. The5 x 5 magic line as a Celt icinterlace is shown in Illus- ration 46. Other knight s-move squares account forthe border of the title pageof this volume, the elevator A 5X5 KNIGHT MOVEJQUARe DERIVEDdoor in IIIustration 47, and a


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been estimated that there are no less than 384 such arrangements, eachone having, of course, a different magic line. Furthermore, from everyone of such squares more than

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In general magical arrangements of numbers result from transposi-tions an d rotations whereby a kind of balance or polarization s estab-lished making a magic square s different from any other s imi la r ar-rangement of numbers s a horseshoe magnet s different from a horse sshoe. This polarity s i nd ic at ed by the ma gi c line in a manner analogoust o t he way ma gne tism in a mag ne t s revealed by the shape assumed byiron filings laid within its field o f attraction. Magic lines are a legitimatean d useful aid to t he designer of ornament but care should be taken no tto use them slavishly. One s personal an d intuitive feeling for rhythm andbeauty should be the final arbiter.

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Frozen Fountain Bragdon

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