One Trend in Architecture
by
Cedric
Astbury,
AA Dip,
FRIBA
HE border lines between one art and another are often
Timpossible to define Painting, sculpture and ofthi- tecture meet and intermingle at several points but in general it will be conceded that architecture is the art concerned with providing shelter for man against the elements.
How closely the arts were connected in the mind of one great thinker of the last century will be obvious from the belief hat no person who was not a great sculptor or painter could be an architect. This was the view of John Ruskin, and further he believed that any person not measuring up to these requirements could never be more than a builder.
It is something of a mystery that each art may ap- pear to have trends which could only occur in that par- ticular medium, but at each change of style obvious similarities are found in all those arts.
One continuous trend is clear throughout architec- tural development. It has been the desire of designers to reduce the mass of the material forming the screen against the elements. They have noticeably tried to lighten the actual and apparent weight of the structure from within and without.
Although reversals have occured at various times the aim of each style of architecture as it has developed has been gradually to reduce the bulk of the building and to increase the proportion of void to solid.
In Egyptian architecture, mass, not unnaturally, was a most distinct characteristic. Not unnaturally, because the temples had their beginnings in sanctuaries carved from solid rock and also because the Egyptians appear to have been in search of physical eternity in their religious practices. These desires for solidarity may have been a reaction to the precarious grasp they maintained on life. living as they did between the arid waste of desert and the fickle whims of the river.
Surrounded by forces they did not understand the Egyptians yearned after permanence. Mummified Pharoes were incarcerated in the near eternal tombs. The searing sun above was an object of awe, and the evening mists from the river an object of fear, since they believed that fevers were carried by them.
Fear probably inspired their massive structures: fear of the unknown inspired the designers and their patrons. fear of their masters drove the masses of slaves to pro- duce the monumental structures.
The architecture of the Greeks which probably shows the next really significant advance, greatly lightened the apparent weight of buildings, by reducing the number
Far East Architect & Builder September, 1965
and thickness of columns as well as refining their shape. The Greeks used, to great effect. the fluting of columns (previously used by the Egyptians) thus lightening the appearance of weight which the stone structure would otherwise have had. They had already, of course, siginifi- cantly reduced the number of columns required inside the temple to support the roof in comparison with any temple ever built by the Egyptians.
Although one could hardly say that the Romans im- proved on the artistic achievements of Greece, the ten- dency to exceed the structural spans of their forerunners continued. Architecturally, the Roman contribution in this line was the introduction of the arch. The arch was not in fact a Roman invention but its general acceptance was due to the incredible expansion of the Roman Mili- tary occupation. With arches of brick, spans of 180 ft. were achieved in buildings like Trajan's Basilica.
The Roman view of art differed significantly from that of the Greeks and it is interesting to notice that the Romans sometimes used architectural forms in a purely decorative application. The Greeks would not have con- sidered such an approach but the Colosseum is an ex- ample where the classical orders have been used by the Romans as superimposed decoration.
Relapse in Techniques
The sudden withdrawal to Italy of the Roman hordes was followed, in the occupied countries by a relapse in building techniques. The architecture of the years from 400 A.D. shows a great heaviness in the structure, but with Roman arches incorporated. The Roman use of the dome appears not to have had any influence in Western Europe, but of course in Eastern Europe it became the most obvious feature of Byzantine architecture.
Gothic architecture, after the set back of the with- drawal of Roman protection and technical skill, started almost from the beginning again. The stone churches built at that time were crude and heavy. The only brick used was ransacked from disused Roman Villas.
Gothic designers immediately began again to lighten their buildings. The climax for such building in stone was reached in the construction of the magnificent fan vaulted roof of King's College Chapel in Cambridge. In- ability to make large sheets of glass did not prevent de- signers at that time or later from reducing the structure to a minimum and creating between the structural mem- bers a weatherproof, transparent screen formed of a thousand fragments of glass.
The successful attempts of Renaissance architects and furniture designers to achieve a reduction of struc- tural sizes is well known, Glazing bars and furniture members are obvious examples. Externally too, refine- ment of appearance was achieved by the applied brick joints in thin white lines after the whole surface had been painted black, in pattern sometimes disconnected from the structural form.
At the time of the industrial revolution, surely the great Exhibition Hall of Paxton in 1851 known as the Crystal Palace was a milestone in the process of making the barrier between man and the elements invisible. Paxton was not basically an architect and his interest in horticul- ture was the inspiration for the building which so closely resembled a conservatory. But be that as it may, the great Exhibition of 1851 achieved a stupendous effect on architecture, influencing the thinking in the use of steel and glass in industrial and railway architecture.
Buildings like St. Pancras Station in London designed nearly twenty years later by Gilbert Scott, show the in- fluence strongly. Some years after the Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park, Ruskin wrote "You shall put, if you will, all London under one blazing dome of many colours that shall light the clouds round it with its flashing, as far as to the sea". In 1920. Ruskin was described as ec- centric and impractical, but today such imaginings are viewed without cynicism. Buckminster Fuller is a modern protagonist of all enveloping dome structures.
The possibility of being able to design structures purely for beauty under a completely protective covering is rather attractive and may not be so far off.
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