翻译自《现代建筑细节 The Details of Modern Architecture》。探讨了建筑中设计风格与建造风格的分离、建筑构想与现实的差异，以及独立于风格的细部生命。作者指出，19世纪以来（如哥特复兴与古典理性主义）在整体式与分层式结构、工艺水平、装饰与结构关系上存在诸多讨论与矛盾。现代主义虽偏爱整体式外露系统，但技术演进却推崇分层系统。各种建筑理论与工艺观念虽历经风格更迭，但在技术实践中始终充满乌托邦色彩与妥协。
在建筑中，既有设计风格（styles of design），也有建造风格（styles of building）。建造风格并不比设计风格更正确或更错误，也谈不上更恰当或更不恰当。建筑中存在着形式的生命，也存在着思想的生命，而这两者的生命并不总是同步的。思想可以改变而形式保持不变；形式也可能在没有意识形态变化的情况下发生改变。一种建造理论的生命可能与一种形式理论的生命并不相同。19世纪见证了许多设计风格：古典主义、哥特复兴、安妮女王风格、新艺术运动。它也见证了几种建造风格：整体式与直白式（monolithic and literal）、分层式与类比式（layered and analogous），以及这些风格的多种组合。这些建造风格与设计风格并不对应。哥特复兴主义者倾向于整体式和直白式，但他们当中许多人采用了分层式建造；古典复兴主义者倾向于分层式和类比式，但他们中也有许多人采用了整体式建造。
建造的思想与建造的现实之间也存在差异，这种差异可能远大于形式上的差异。许多建筑师在大肆宣扬一种施工风格的同时，却在用另一种风格进行建造；许多人用不同的施工风格建造了不同的建筑，还有一些人在同一栋建筑内使用了不同的施工风格。很少有人在其大量的作品中保持一致，这并非由于虚伪，而是由于必要性和现实环境。在某种程度上，这是因为施工的逻辑往往难以一概而论；而在更大程度上，则是因为他们的建造思想并不适用于他们当时所处的实际条件。
建筑中同样存在着独立于风格的细部（details）的生命。许多细部具有风格和历史联想，这些联想可能与它们所处建筑的风格和历史联想相符，也可能不符。但细部所服务的职能并不局限于历史联想。它们可以清晰划分建筑的体量（mass）；它们可以确立或否定尺度；它们可以阐明或否定建筑的结构行为；它们还可以表现或隐瞒建筑的组装方式。那些对历史风格持有相同态度的设计师，在面对这些以及其他问题时，其反应可能会大相径庭。
1855年，乔治·埃德蒙·斯特里特（George Edmund Street）在结束了对意大利北部的考察后，出版了《中世纪的砖与大理石：意大利北部游记》（Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of a Tour of North Italy）。如今这本书除了历史学家外已无人问津，但在19世纪它曾被广泛阅读。斯特里特绝非古典主义者。他仅用了一个短章来记录他访问维琴察的经历（他发现那里的建筑“悲惨而破败”），而威尼斯则占据了四个章节，主要聚焦于哥特式建筑。斯特里特将其分为两种类型：以裸露砖墙为代表的整体式风格（monolithic style），以及以圣马可大教堂覆面大理石墙面为代表的镶嵌式风格（incrusted style）。斯特里特的偏好是前者：
我在旅途中对所经建筑的记录中，描述了处理这种工艺的两种方式：第一种是威尼斯所采用的做法——用薄薄的一层或数层大理石饰面贴在砖墙上；另一种是贝加莫、克雷莫纳和科莫所采用的做法——大理石构成了墙体实体的一部分。
正如人们自然会预料的那样，这两种方式导致了两种截然不同的建筑风格与建造模式。
威尼斯的做法往往会破坏优秀的建筑，因为它注定会导致对作品真实结构的完全掩盖；相反，另一种做法则遵循了正确的原则，并乐于极为仔细地勾勒出作品建造中的每一条线索。甚至可以说，一种模式的设计旨在掩盖真实的建造方式，而另一种模式则旨在阐明真实的建造方式。
斯特里特并不是19世纪唯一一个对贴面建造系统与整体式建造系统做出区分的作家。尤金-埃马纽埃尔·维奥莱-勒-杜克（Eugène-Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc）曾批评罗马建筑在砖质建筑上应用贴面和非结构柱的做法，并将其与装饰和结构不可分割的希腊建筑进行了对比。
并非现代的每一位理论家都对这种整体式、未完工的建造方式抱有好感。许多人与 H. S. 古德哈特-伦德尔（H. S. Goodhart-Rendel）持相同观点，认为设计的常规过程是对建筑的物理特性进行审美化、戏剧化，并用雕塑来装饰它们。因为雕塑是赋予所有真实建筑习惯用于装饰的模拟建筑的正统名称。罗马式的墙面连续拱廊，……（以及文艺复兴时期的排柱，）它们与真实的拱券、屋顶和柱廊的关系，正如石头雕刻的圣徒和政治家与血肉之躯的圣徒和政治家的关系完全一样。在本质上，通常用来强调建筑自然外观的线条和凹槽也具有雕塑性。
这一群体中最杰出的是戈特弗里德·森佩尔（Gottfried Semper），他坚称建筑等于结构加上饰面（cladding），而核心要素正是饰面本身。处于不同风格阵营但本质上持相同观点的则是约翰·拉斯金（John Ruskin），他写道：
建筑师没有义务去展示结构；我们也不应抱怨他将其隐藏，正如我们不会因为人体外表皮掩盖了其大部分解剖结构而感到遗憾一样；然而，能够向聪明的眼睛揭示其宏大结构秘密的建筑，通常会是最高贵的，这就像动物的形态一样，尽管这些秘密可能会对粗心的观察者隐蔽起来。
对整体式或分层式系统的偏好超越了风格上的偏好。尽管奥托·瓦格纳（Otto Wagner）和奥古斯特·佩雷（Auguste Perret）本质上都是古典主义者，但瓦格纳使用的是分层系统，而佩雷使用的是整体系统。其他人，包括弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特（Frank Lloyd Wright），在其职业生涯的不同时期都曾使用过这两种系统。有些理论家则骑墙观望。19世纪末巴黎美术学院（Beaux-Arts）的首席理论家朱利安·加代（Julien Guadet）承认这两种系统都是可接受的建造手段，许多建筑师——从格林兄弟（Greene brothers）到麦金、米德与怀特事务所（McKim, Mead & White）——都同时使用了这两种系统。
20世纪20年代和30年代的现代主义改变了这一切。那个充满革命教条的时代无法接受用两种相互矛盾的方法来解决同一个问题。现代主义者的选择是整体式系统，并且这种偏好在随后的几年中变得更加强烈。只要现代主义还保留着其道德热忱和革命修辞，它就会保留对整体式外露结构系统的偏好。这种偏好今天仍为许多人所保留。
这种教条发展中的讽刺之处在于，建筑行业——尤其是在美国——正朝着完全相反的方向发展，这主要是受工业化的影响。尽管某些新技术和新材料（例如预制混凝土）似乎使得整体式系统变得可取，但钢框架的发展却促使了分层系统的广泛使用。
感知与结构理性主义（PERCEPTION AND STRUCTURAL RATIONALISM）
许多19世纪的古典建筑师对理性建造的关注并不亚于斯特里特，但他们的侧重点不同。大多数人钦佩整体式外露建造，但不认为它是优秀建筑的先决条件。加代写道：“这是一种卓越的美，它源于建造本身，这就是建筑本身，不需要更多的装饰，”但与此同时他也认识到，为了取得某种效果，对结构进行覆面并夸大某些特征往往是有利的。加代的目标是使坚固性“显而易见（manifest）”。在许多方面，这是一个比哥特复兴主义者所使用的任何要求都更具限制性的条件。他认为某些类型的结构，特别是带有飞扶壁的结构，在视觉上是不稳定的。尽管加代是一位古典主义者，但他却因圣母院的坚固感而对其正面赞赏有加：
在艺术中，赞赏是一种幸福感，是完全平静的满足，而惊奇则总是伴随着焦虑。因此，毋庸置疑的显见坚固性比惊人之举更能俘获精神，赞赏有所克制，首先人们必须被说服。
这两种印象在同一栋建筑——巴黎圣母院中是清晰可辨的。当人们看到它的主立面，那如此宏伟的塔楼、如此严整的门洞、其两层画廊纯净的线条时，人们会赞叹这座建筑呈现出宏伟的生命力，没有任何事故、没有恶劣的天气、没有时间的流逝，能够摧毁或破坏这个布局如此稳固、比例如此强健的整体。
巴黎圣母院的背面，由于使用了扶壁，未能充分解释其砖石的重量是如何传递到地面的。它采用了维奥莱-勒-DC所说的平衡原则（principle of equilibrium），而不是更理想的叠加原则（principle of superimposition）。用加代的话来说：
人们痛苦地察觉到，内部向外部、外部向内部的作用力和反作用力、推力的制造是多么令人揪心。这座建筑看起来就像一艘在干船坞里靠支柱撑着的船，人们的心中不禁会想，如果发生一次冲击、一块石头被压碎，将会给这种惊人的平衡带来怎样的危机；惊人的平衡，是的，但必须说，与那座威严庄重、坚不可摧的坚固主立面相比，它是人工的且脆弱的。
现代主义者通常更喜欢巴黎圣母院的背面，对许多人来说，这种失重感正是现代时代的精髓。卡济米尔·马列维奇（Kazimir Malevich）在1920年写道：“我想，重量的分布或在失重状态下的解放，应该是上帝创造世界和宇宙的原因……人类也同样在努力争取这一点——驱散重量，使自己变得失重。”
马列维奇对建筑有着浓厚的兴趣，并将工厂视为实现精神觉醒的途径；然而，他对外在质量（mass）的否定是精神的体现，而非建造方式的体现，对格里特·里特维德（Gerrit Rietveld）而言也是如此（尽管程度较轻）。对其他人（包括赖特和勒·柯布西耶）来说，质量的缺失和“显而易见的稳定性”的缺席，不可避免地与钢框架或混凝土框架联系在一起。
现代主义的胜利是平衡原则对叠加原则的胜利。很少有现代主义者会像加代那样批评巴黎圣母院的飞扶壁。在这里感受到的张力，与人们在萨伏伊别墅（Villa Savoie）所感受到的并不异样——那种由带形窗切割的悬浮体量。
许多典型的现代主义细部正是这种态度逆转的结果，这也是为什么典型的现代主义细部往往是传统细部的颠倒，因为它试图否定后者所试图肯定的东西。当然，大多数现代主义者会对此提出异议，他们将此类细部视为对实用问题的显而易见之解。如果要批评传统主义者不接受框架结构不可避免的特性，那么我们就应当称赞他们认识到了结构与结构感知是两回事。
我们将装饰的消失与现代建筑系统的到来联系在一起，但在某种程度上，这些事件仅仅是同时发生，而非相互依存。许多批评装饰的人（其中包括阿道夫·洛斯）是出于文化而非技术的原因，而现代主义者通常认为新技术改变了装饰的性质，而非消除了装饰。事实上，只要建筑使用的是隐蔽了结构的层叠建造法，某种形式的装饰性贴面对于结构表达就是必不可少的。这种类型的表达存在于现代主义的所有阶段——这一事实是现代建筑的设计师们不愿承认、而现代历史学家也迟迟未能认识到的。
工艺（CRAFTSMANSHIP）
从某种意义上说，细部的诞生伴随着工艺的消亡。看到文艺复兴时期建筑师的图纸与最终建成的建筑是如此不相符，总是令人惊讶，尤其是在柱头等细部上。这些元素的质量很大程度上归功于其执行的质量，而执行这些工艺的人在调整设计时拥有相当大的自由度。图纸有时会被提交给建筑师批准，但例如雷恩（Wren）是否对他的教堂中的木镶板设计投入了大量精力，这是令人怀疑的。
这种体系在今天基本已经消亡，这是毫无疑问的。它如何消亡以及为何消亡并不那么清晰。今天，传统意义上的石雕刻匠已经寥寥无几。在1850年，这类工匠还俯拾皆是，但拉斯金和其他人感叹他们无异于奴隶，因为他们所做的只是机械地执行他人设计的形式。艺术层面和技能层面的工艺之死曾被归咎于工业革命，但这并非简单的机器取代人的问题。无论如何，19世纪的建筑师对建筑工艺施加了越来越多的控制，哪怕是在仍然需要大量手工劳动的产业革命前建筑方法中。
图1.6展示了一幅完成于1876年的半木构建筑——梅里斯特伍德（Merrist Wood）的施工图。请注意，建筑师理查德·诺曼·肖（Richard Norman Shaw）特别规定“木材之间的间距宽度要略有变化”，并且木板的宽度也应有所变化。肖显然是在试图营造一种乡土半木结构房屋的不精确外观。当然，讽刺的是，他必须精确地规定这种不精确性应如何实现，而不是听由其偶然发生。雷恩的图纸上绝不会出现这样的注释。但无论它是如何实现的，值得注意的是，建筑师所渴望的工艺水平比他通常能够得到的要低。这是拉斯金对建筑中渴望“粗糙（rudeness）”的遗产。
拉斯金和工艺美术运动（Arts and Crafts）的建筑师通过试图复兴工匠作为艺术家的传统来应对工艺的衰落。由于这一尝试，不完美的工艺开始受到重视。正如古德哈特-伦德尔所指出的：
工人的工具痕迹可以为成品增加积极价值的信条——这一信条与其说基于美学，不如说基于社会学式的感伤——构成了被称为工艺美术运动的整个基础。
但这种诉求并非全无美学考量。拉斯金谈到了他所谓的粗糙原则：
我将这一原则的阐述局限于建筑，但绝不能将其视为仅适用于建筑。迄今为止，我使用“不完美”和“完美”这两个词，仅仅是为了区分极其拙劣的工艺与以平均精度和科学性执行的工作；我一直在呼吁，应当接纳任何程度的笨拙，只要能够给劳动者的心灵留出表达的空间。但是，严格来说，任何优秀的工作都不可能是完美的，对完美的追求永远是对艺术终极目标的一种误解。
正如19世纪的许多其他理论一样，工艺美术运动设计的习语和规则在核心信念被遗忘后依然存在了很长时间。拉斯金和威廉·莫里斯（William Morris）对工匠的尊重、对机械和完美的厌恶，以及对粗糙的喜爱，为现代主义留下了对不够完美的工艺的接纳甚至赞赏，以及对视觉上能够“自我解释”的木作接纳。这种接纳绝非普遍的。密斯·凡·德·罗（Mies van der Rohe）通常被赞誉为最杰出的现代细部大师，他不遗余力地隐藏建筑的接缝，以使钢构件彼此融为一体，不留可见的接缝、帽盖或紧固件；而格林兄弟（Greene brothers）则因其对暴露紧固件的使用以及对木构件连接方式的清晰表达而被赞誉为伟大的细部设计大师。
建造一直涉及不同水平的可接受工艺，从精确到粗糙。在分层形式的建造中，工艺的等级既合乎逻辑又显而易见：外露的建造是精确的；隐藏的建造是粗糙的。现代主义对整体式建造的渴望模糊了但并未消灭这种区别。那些提倡施工中采用统一工艺的19世纪作家非常清楚这是一个不切实际的想法，但他们的关切与其说是实际的，不如说是乌托邦式的。这种区别在20世纪那些倡导类似工艺观念的作家脑海中并不那么清晰。
就20世纪的建筑师关心其工作的社会后果而言，他们将焦点集中在建筑物如何影响其使用者的行为上。就19世纪的建筑师关心其工作的社会后果而言，他们将焦点集中在建筑物（特别是其装饰）如何影响建造它们的人身上。19世纪的建筑师与20世纪的建筑师之间，或许没有比各自对对方的社会关切如此漠不关心更大的差异了。
拉斯金、莫里斯和普金（Pugin）不接受现状。他们不喜欢他们社会所生产的建筑，他们试图通过改善社会来改善建筑。随后的建筑师则必须将他们委托项目的现实，与一套在起源上高度乌托邦式的建造规则调和起来。威廉·莫里斯和他的建筑师菲利普·韦伯（Philip Webb）是社会主义者，这绝非偶然，尽管他们的客户包括皇室成员。后来的建筑师，包括弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特，在协调他们的理性建造思想与他们所生活的社会施加的限制之间的差异时，将经历相当多的困难。
装饰与施工（ORNAMENT AND CONSTRUCTION）
蒙哥马利· Schuyler（Montgomery Schuyler）在1912年对路易斯·沙利文（Louis Sullivan）位于艾奥瓦州锡达拉皮兹（Cedar Rapids）的人民储蓄银行（Peoples Savings Bank）的评论中，总体上表现出同情并发现了许多值得称赞的地方。然而，他不喜欢某些细部，特别是室内的细部：
我们所称的功能性造型（functional modelling）的缺失，在室内几乎和在室外一样明显。如果它没有那么引人注目，那是因为一种在这里解释并倾向于 justifying 这种疏漏的环境。这个内部空间的材料本身具有极大的美感和奢华感。柜台的大理石、隔断的橡木，显然都是经过精心挑选以达到其装饰效果的，并且取得了成功。这种材料在以尽可能大且不间断的表面使用时，会展现出最佳效果。人们在这种开阔面中，愿意放弃大理石的模压框架、木作的镶板。但在其他地方以及整个空间中，显而易见的是，直角方棱（square arris）对这位设计者来说毫无畏惧，他甘愿省去对另一学派的设计者、或者我们可以说对任何“学派”的设计者来说属于“收口”不可或缺的最低限度。这一点在各处的细部中随处可见，在柜台的木作中、在壁画的框边中、在次要房间的“饰边（trim）”中。而且，这种放弃传统过渡与修饰的意愿，在柱子上也同样明显——这些柱子几乎算不上柱子，其作为介质并在柱身与柱帽（abacus）之间形成渐进过渡的柱头（capital）本该是一个必不可少的构件，但它们更像是柱桩（posts），柱帽的向外延伸直接叠加在它们上面，或者说介入其中，因为承载天窗墙壁的柱子被“延伸”成了我们在外观怪异雕饰中看到的墩柱条带。即便如此，必须承认，无论是石雕中的钟形隆起，还是木质或金属中的发散支撑，支撑并缓和柱帽的某种形式的柱头，不仅是传统的需要，也是建造性质的要求，省略它是结构逻辑上的一种失误。
在舒勒和维奥莱-勒-杜克看来，线条和装饰的目的是创造过渡。他对沙利文的批评暴露了这一思想的源头：维奥莱-勒-杜克，他曾说过：“线条服务于三种目的：它要么支撑一个挑出部分，要么形成一个基脚，要么标志一个高度，或者界定一个开口。在前一种情况下，线条是檐口（cornice），在第二种情况下是基座（base），在第三种情况下是带形饰（stringcourse）、门侧柱（jamb）、框（frame）。除了这三种功能外，线条没有理性的目的。”
在舒勒和维奥莱-勒-杜克看来，线条应当与接缝重合，通常覆盖接缝。这在大多数传统建筑中就是如此，在那里的线条通常发挥着诸如覆盖异质材料之间棘手接缝等功能性目的（如踢脚线和窗饰）。在传统系统中，装饰和线条是截然不同的元素，线条是一个连续的、通常呈曲线的断面，并在其上施加装饰——如蛋叶饰（egg and dart）等重复图案。沙利文的装饰并非缺乏结构逻辑的结果；它只是遵循了一套不同的规则。在他的作品中，没有线条的接缝是很常见的。沙利文的装饰独立于线条和接缝，它流淌在接缝和表面之上，不受施工限制的约束。他的陶土块通常被设计用来营造连续的错觉。在大吉大厦（Gage Building）中，其柱子具有沙利文风格的等效凹槽和柱头，这些元素流淌在陶土表面及其接缝上，而不是形成终结收口。
普金在其关于哥特式的著作中争辩说，许多装饰和线条具有实际用途，例如窗户和扶壁上的滴水线（drip moldings）可以将水排离关键接缝。虽然这在个别情况下是真实的，但对于哥特式或其他任何风格的绝大多数线条来说并非如此。拉斯金尽管热爱哥特式，却驳斥了装饰与结构具有功能或象征关系的观点：
装饰仅仅是受装饰的结构这一虚假理论是如此美丽和 plausable（ plausable），以至于它可能会分散你对远为更重要的设计抽象条件的注意力。结构永远不应被矛盾，在最好的建筑中，它得到了令人愉悦的展示和强化……然而，机械结构与真实设计的独立性是如此之高，当我开始我的建筑讲座时，我要给你们作为标准的第一个建筑，将是其结构完全被隐藏的建筑。它将是佛罗伦萨洗礼堂（Baptistery of Florence）……
关于装饰与结构的关系，海因里希·H·理查德森（H. H. Richardson）的合作者利奥波德·埃伊德利茨（Leopold Eidlitz）提出了更具说服力的论点。他认为，线条、装饰和质感有助于表达建筑构件中起作用的结构力量：
装饰建筑材料表面的目的是……为其赋予人工质感，这应增强其抵抗压力的表观能力。雕刻装饰旨在通过强调其功能来装饰结构质量，质量本身绝不能被装饰完全吸收或掩盖，而必须清晰可辨，并在其形态中也表达出它所执行的功能……柱头和牛腿（corbel）的钟形部分将作为一个例证。竖起一片叶子或动物形态，无论是风格化的还是未风格化的，并将这片叶子、动物或人类形态用作结构部件，或者更糟的是，仅仅为了充当结构某一部分到另一部分的便利过渡，这违背了艺术工作的本质。
古典理性主义者在装饰与结构的主题上也持有同样强烈的情感。和埃伊德利茨一样，他们承认感知在理性建造中的作用：为了使结构力量显而易见，某些特性必须被刻画或夸大。
结论（CONCLUSION）
在19世纪的最后一个四分之一里，理论家和建筑师们对于什么是理性建造、结构如何与形式相关联，或者施工如何影响风格，并没有达成太多的共识。建筑是加了装饰的施工，还是结构加贴面？它可以是两者的某种结合吗？优秀建筑是坚固而整体的，还是可以有贴面的？装饰的角色是什么：它是功能的必然结果？它是内部结构力量的外在表现，还是仅仅独立于其结构基础的一门语言？工艺在建筑中的角色是什么：当它最不引人注目、实现无缝且几何上完美的接缝时它最成功，还是这种完美本身就是一种堕落？工艺与装饰的关系是什么：装饰的目的是掩盖糟糕的工艺，还是展示精湛的工艺？在一个工艺似乎正在消失的时代，装饰是否也应该随之消失？
这些问题早于1875年至1920年间发生的建筑工业化，并且是基于对通过古老手段建造的建筑的分析。然而，当建造过程改变时，其背后的思想并没有被抛弃。艺术中形式的生命与艺术中思想的生命往往不同，许多关于优秀建筑的这些构想在风格的多次更迭中历久弥新。砖依然是砖；木头依然是木头。优秀的建筑过去和现在都被描述为坚固的、诚实的和工艺精湛的。即使是最具打破常规倾向的现代主义者，也极少能够在对施工进行探讨时不具备某些知识并作某些先例参考。这在一定程度上解释了接下来例子中出现的矛盾。为什么同一批建筑师对施工中的某一现象如此敏锐，而对另一现象却如此盲目？为什么有些人对实现其构想的实用性如此漠不关心？答案有时是，但并不总是——无知。现代时期的现代主义和传统主义的技术史，是一部在技术上与其在形象上一样充满乌托邦色彩的历史。
英文原文 (Introduction)
1
Introduction
There are styles of design in architecture and there are styles of building in architecture. Styles of building are no more right or wrong and nor more appropriate or inappropriate than styles of architecture. There is a life of forms in architecture and there is a life of ideas in architecture, lives that are not always the same. Ideas may change while forms are constant; forms may change without changes in ideology. The life of a theory of building may not be the same as the life of a theory of form. The nineteenth century saw many styles of design: Classic, Gothic, Queen Anne, Art Nouveau. It also saw several styles of building: monolithic and literal, layered and analogous, and many combinations of these. These styles of building did not correspond to styles in design. The Gothic Revivalists tended toward the monolithic and the literal, but many of them built in the layered style, the Classical Revivalists tended toward the layered and the analogous, but many of them built in the monolithic style.
There is also a difference between ideas of building and realities of building, a difference that is probably much greater than differences in form. Many architects propagated one style of construction while building in another. Many built different buildings in different styles of construction, and some used different styles of construction within the same building. Few were consistent through a large body of work, not because of insincerity but because of necessity and circumstance. To a certain extent this is because the logics of construction often defy generalization; to a greater degree it is because their ideas of building were inappropriate to the conditions to which they were being applied.
There is also in architecture a life of details, which is independent of style. Many details have stylistic and historical associations, and these may or may not correspond to the stylistic and historical associations of the buildings in which they are used. But details serve other functions than historical association. They may articulate the building’s mass. They may establish scale or deny it. They may explain or deny the structural behavior of the building. They may express or conceal the way the building has been assembled. Designers whose attitudes toward historical style are identical may differ greatly in their response to these and other questions.
In 1855, after returning from a tour of Northern Italy, George Edmund Street published Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of a Tour of North Italy. Today the book is forgotten except by historians, but in the nineteenth century it was widely read. Street was no Classicist. He devotes only a short chapter to his visit to Vicenza (where he found the buildings “wretched and ruinous”), while Venice receives four chapters, devoted largely to the Gothic buildings. Street categorizes them in two types: the monolithic style, represented by churches with exposed brick walls, and the incrusted style, represented by the marble-clad walls of St. Marks. Street’s preference is for the former:
In my notes upon the buildings as they were passed in my journeys. I have described two modes in which this kind of work was treated: the first was that practised in Venice the veneering of brick walls with thin layers or coats of marble: the other, that practised at Bergamo, Cremona, and Como-in which the marble formed portion of the substance of the wall.
These two modes led, as would naturally be expected, to two entirely different styles and modes of architecture.
The Venetian mode was rather likely to be destructive of good architecture, because it was sure to end in an entire concealment of the real construction of the work; the other mode, on the contrary, proceeded on true principles, and took pleasure in defining most carefully every line in the construction of the work. It might almost be said that one mode was devised with a view to the concealment, and the other with a view to the explanation, of the real mode of construction.
Street was not the only nineteenth-century writer to make a distinction between clad and monolithic systems of building. Eugène-Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc criticized Roman architecture for the application of veneers and nonstructural columns to brick buildings, contrasting it with Greek architecture, in which decoration and structure were inseparable.
Not all theoreticians of the modern era shared this preference for monolithic, unfinished construction. Many believed, with H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, that the normal process of design is to aestheticise, to dramatise, the physical character of buildings and to adorn them with sculpture. For sculpture is the proper name given to all the mimic architecture with which real architecture is customarily adorned. The Romanesque wall arcade,… (and the Renaissance rows of pilasters, stand in exactly the same relationship to real arches, roofs, and colonnades as that in which stone saints and statesmen stand to saints and statesmen of flesh and blood. Sculptural too, in their essence are the moldings and flutings by means of which the natural appearances of construction are usually emphasized.
Foremost in this group was Gottfried Semper, who insisted that architecture was structure plus cladding and that the essential element was the cladding itself. In a different stylistic camp but essentially in agreement was John Ruskin, who wrote:
The Architect is not bound to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, although from a careless observer they may be concealed.
The preference for the monolithic or the layered system transcended stylistic preferences. Although Otto Wagner and Auguste Perret were both essentially Classicists, Wagner used the layered system and Perret the monolithic. Others, including Frank Lloyd Wright, used both systems at different times in their careers. Some theoreticians straddled the fence. Julien Guadet, the chief theoretician of the Beaux-Arts in the late nineteenth century, recognized both systems as acceptable means of building, and many architects-from the Greene brothers to McKim, Mead & White used both systems simultaneously.
The Modernism of the 1920s and the 1930s changed this. That era of revolutionary dogma would not accept two contradictory methods of solving the same problem. The Modernist choice was for the monolithic system, and this preference became stronger in subsequent years. As long as Modernism retained its moral earnestness and its revolutionary rhetoric, it retained its preference for monolithic exposed structural systems. This preference is retained by many today.
The irony in the development of this dogma is that the construction industry-particularly in the United States was developing along opposite lines, mainly because of the influence of industrialization. Although certain new techniques and materials (e.g. precast concrete) seemed to make the monolithic system desirable, the development of the steel frame encouraged the use of the layered system.
PERCEPTION AND STRUCTURAL RATIONALISM
Many Classical architects of the nineteenth century were no less concerned with rational building than Street, but their priorities were different. Most admired monolithic exposed construction but did not consider it to be a prerequisite of good building. Guadet wrote: “It is a superior beauty, that which results from the construction itself, that is the architecture itself, and does not require further decoration,” but at the same time he recognized that it was often advantageous to clad structures and to exaggerate certain characteristics for the sake of effect. Guadet’s aim was to make solidity “manifest.” In many ways this was a more restrictive requirement than any used by the Gothic Revivalists. Certain types of structures, particularly those with flying buttresses, he considered to be visually unstable. Guadet, despite being a Classicist, admired the front of Notre Dame for its solidity:
In art, admiration is a sense of well being, the satisfaction of total repose, while astonishment does not occur without anxiety. Thus apparent solidity, incontestable, captures the spirit more than the tour de force, admiration holds itself back, first one ought to be convinced.
These two impressions are perceptible in the same building, Notre Dame de Paris. When one views the main facade with its towers so monumental, its portals so well enclosed, the pure lines of its two galleries, one admires the building in its magnificent health, no accident, no inclemency, no passage of time, seems to destroy or compromise this ensemble so well planted, so strong in its proportions.
The rear of Notre Dame, because of the use of buttresses, does not adequately explain how the weight of its masonry finds its way to the ground. It employs what Viollet-le-Duc called the principle of equilibrium, rather than the more desirable system of superimposition. In Guadet’s words,
One perceives with pain how fearfully made are the actions and reactions, the thrusts from the interior to the exterior, from the exterior to the interior. The building appears as a ship in drydock, propped up by its buttresses, and the mind wonders what would occur if a shock, a crushed stone, should jeopardize this astonishing equilibrium; astonishing, but one ought to say artificial and precarious in comparison with the marvelous main facade.
Modernists have generally preferred the rear of Notre Dame, and for many this sense of weightlessness was the essence of the modern era. Kazimir Malevich wrote in 1920: “I suppose weight distribution or liberation in weightlessness to have been the reason for God’s creation of the world and the Universe…. Man too strives for the same thing to disperse weight and himself become weightless.”
Malevich had considerable interest in architecture, and saw the factory as the means of spiritual realization; however, his denial of mass was a manifestation of the spirit, not of construction, as to a lesser degree it was for Gerrit Rietveld. For others, including Wright and Le Corbusier, the lack of mass and the absence of “stability made manifest” were inevitably linked with the steel or concrete frame.
The triumph of Modernism was the triumph of the principle of equilibrium over the principle of superimposition. Few Modernists would criticize the flying buttresses of Notre Dame as Guadet had done. And the perception of tension here is not unlike that one feels at the Villa Savoie, with its floating volume cut by a ribbon window.
Many of the typical Modernist details resulted from this reversal of attitude, and it is one reason why the typical Modernist detail is so often an inversion of a traditional detail, for it seeks to deny what the other seeks to affirm. This, of course, would be contested by most Modernists, who saw such details as the obvious solution to pragmatic problems. If one is to criticize the traditionalists for their nonacceptance of an inevitable characteristic of frame construction, one should compliment them on the recognition that structure and the perception of structure are different things.
We associate the disappearance of ornament with the arrival of modern building systems, but to an extent these events were merely simultaneous rather than interdependent. Many who criticized ornament (among them Adolf Loos) did so for cultural rather than technical reasons, and Modernists more commonly saw the new technology as changing the nature of ornament rather than eliminating it. In fact, so long as buildings were built using layered construction in which the structure was concealed, some form of ornamental cladding was necessary for structural expression. This type of expression exists in all phases of Modernism-a fact that the designers of Modern architecture have been reluctant to acknowledge and Modern historians have been slow to recognize.
CRAFTSMANSHIP
In one sense, detailing was born when craftsmanship died. It is always surprising to see how little the drawings of Renaissance architects resemble the finished buildings, particularly in such details as column capitals. The quality of these elements is due largely to the quality of their execution, and the men who executed them had a fair degree of latitude in their adaption of the design. Drawings were sometimes submitted to the architects for approval, but it is doubtful that Wren, for example, had a great deal to do with the design of the wood paneling in his churches.
That this system is largely dead today there is no question. How and why it died is not so clear. Today there are few stonecarvers in the traditional sense. In 1850 there were plenty, but Ruskin and others lamented that they were little better than slaves, since all they did was mechanically execute forms designed by others. The death of craftsmanship on the level of art and on the level of skill has been ascribed to the Industrial Revolution, but it was not a simple case of machines replacing men. In any case, nineteenth-century architects exercised more and more control over the craft of building, even when preindustrial building methods requiring much handwork were still in use.
Figure 1.6 shows a working drawing for Merrist Wood, a half-timbered building completed in 1876. Note that the architect, Richard Norman Shaw, specified that “the space between the timbers be varied slightly in width,” and that the width of the boards be varied also. Shaw was obviously trying to achieve the imprecise look of a vernacular half-timbered house. The irony, of course, is that he had to specify precisely how this imprecision was to be achieved, rather than leaving it to chance. No such note would ever have appeared on a Wren drawing. But however it was achieved, it is noteworthy that the architect desired a lower level of craftsmanship than he would normally receive. This is the legacy of Ruskin’s desire for “rudeness” in building.
Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts architects responded to the decline in craftsmanship by attempting to revive the tradition of the craftsman as artist. As a result of this attempt, imperfect craftsmanship came to be valued. As Goodhart-Rendel notes,
The tenet… that the mark of the worker’s tool can add positive value to the finished work, a tenet that is less based upon aesthetics than upon sociological sentimentality was the foundation for the whole movement known as the Arts and Crafts.
But the appeal was not entirely unaesthetic. Ruskin wrote of what he called the principle of rudeness:
I have confined the illustration of the principle to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
As with many other nineteenth-century theories, the idioms and rules of Arts and Crafts design remained long after the core of the belief had been forgotten. Ruskin’s and William Morris’s respect for the craftsman, their hatred of the mechanical and perfect, and their love of rudeness bequeathed to Modernism an acceptance and even an admiration for less-than-perfect workmanship, and a love of joinery that “explained” itself visually. This acceptance was by no means universal. Mies van der Rohe, generally praised as the finest of modern detailers, went to great lengths to conceal the joints of his buildings so that steel members flowed into one another without visible seams, caps, or fasteners, whereas the Greene brothers are praised as great detailers for their use of exposed fasteners and their articulation of the means of joining wood members.
Construction has always involved various levels of acceptable craftsmanship, from the precise to the crude. In layered forms of construction, the hierarchy of craftsmanship was both logical and obvious: Exposed construction was percise; concealed construction was crude. The Modernist desire for monolithic construction blurred but did not destroy this distinction. Those nineteenth-century writers who advocated uniform craftmanship in construction were well aware that this was an impractical idea, but their concerns were utopian rather than practical. This distinction was not so clear in the minds of the twentieth-century writers who advocated similar ideas of craftsmanship.
Insofar as twentieth-century architects have concerned themselves with the social consequences of their work, they have focused on the way in which buildings affect the behavior of their occupants. Insofar as nineteenth-century architects concerned themselves with the social consequences of their work, they focused on the way in which buildings (and particularly their ornaments) affect those who build them. There is perhaps no greater difference between the architects of the nineteenth century and those of the twentieth than that each group was so indifferent to the social concerns of the other.
Ruskin, Morris, and Pugin did not accept the world as it was. They did not like the buildings their society was producing, and they sought to better the buildings by bettering the society. The architects who followed them had to reconcile the realities of their commissions with a set of rules for building that were highly utopian in origin. It is not an accident that William Morris and his architect, Philip Webb, were socialists, despite the fact that their clients included the royal family. Subsequent architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, were to experience considerably more difficulty in reconciling the differences between their ideas of rational construction and the constraints imposed by the societies in which they lived.
ORNAMENT AND CONSTRUCTION
In his 1912 review of Louis Sullivan’s Peoples Savings Bank at Cedar Rapids, Montgomery Schuyler was generally sympathetic and found much to praise. However, he disliked certain aspects of the detailing, particularly in the interior:
The absence of what we called functional modelling is as marked, almost, in the interior as on the exterior. If it be not so noticeable, that proceeds from a circumstance which here explains and tends to justify the omission. The material itself of this interior is of great beauty and great sumptuosity. The marble of the counters, the oak of the partitions have evidently been carefully sought with reference to their decorative effect, and sought successfully. Material of this kind shows to the best advantage when employed in unbroken surfaces as extensive as may be. One willingly foregoes, in such expanses, the moulded framing of the marble, the panelling of the woodwork. But elsewhere and throughout it is evident that a square arris has no terrors whatever for this designer and that he willingly omits what to the designer of another school, to the designer, we may say, of any “school,” would be the irreducible minimum of “finish.” This is seen in the detail throughout, in the joinery of the counters, in the framing of the mural pictures, in the “trim” of the subordinate rooms. And the willingness to forego traditional transitions and modifications is as evident in the columns, which are hardly columns, of which the capital that mediates and forms a graduated transition between the shaft and the abacus is an essential member, but rather posts, upon which the spread of the abacus is directly superposed, or rather interposed, for the posts which carry the clerestory walls are “produced” into the strips of pier which we have seen terminating in the grotesques of the exterior. Even so, it must be admitted that some form of capital, either the swell of a bell in stonework or spreading braces in wood or metal, supporting and relieving the abacus, is demanded not only by tradition but by the nature of the construction and that the omission of it is a lapse in structural logic.
To Schuyler the purpose of moldings and ornaments was to create transitions. His criticisms of Sullivan betray the source of this idea: Viollet-le-Duc, who said that “the molding serves three purposes: it either supports a projection, or it forms a footing, or it marks a height, or defines an opening. In the first case the molding is a cornice, in the second a base, in the third a stringcourse, a jamb, a frame. Except for these three functions a molding has no rational purpose.”
In the view of Schuyler and Viollet-le-Duc, the molding should be coincident with the joint, often covering it. This is the case in most traditional architecture, where moldings often serve such functional purposes as covering difficult joints between dissimilar materials (as in baseboards and window trim). In the traditional system, ornament and moldings are distinct elements, a molding being a continuous, often curved section to which the ornament-a repetitive pattern, such as egg and dart-is applied. Sullivan’s ornament is not the result of a lack of structural logic; it simply follows a different set of rules. Joints without moldings are common in his work. Sullivan’s ornament is independent of both moldings and joints, and it flows across joints and surfaces independent of constructional constraints. His terra cotta blocks are often designed to create the illusion of continuity. In the Gage Building, whose columns have the Sullivanesque equivalents of fluting and capitals, these elements flow across the surfaces of the terra cotta and its joints rather than forming terminations.
Pugin, in his writings on Gothic, argued that many ornaments and moldings serve practical purposes, for example, drip moldings on windows and buttresses keep water away from critical joints. While this is true in isolated cases, it is not true of the vast majority of moldings in Gothic or in any other style. Ruskin, although a lover of Gothic, dismissed the idea that ornament had a functional or symbolic relationship to structure:
the false theory that ornamentation should be merely decorated structure is so pretty and plausible, that it is likely to take away your attention from the far more important abstract conditions of design. Structure should never be contradicted, and in the best buildings it is pleasantly exhibited and enforced… yet so independent is the mechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my Lectures on Architecture, the first building I shall give you as a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly concealed. It will be the Baptistery of Florence….
A more convincing case for the relationship of ornament and structure was made by Leopold Eidlitz, H. H. Richardson’s collaborator, who argued that moldings, ornaments, and textures serve to express the structural forces at work in an architectural element:
The object of decorating the surfaces of building material is… to give artificial texture to it, which shall re-enforce its apparent capability to resist pressure. Carved ornament being intended to decorate a structural mass with the view of accentuating its function, the mass itself must not be entirely absorbed or covered up by the ornament, but must be clearly perceptible, and express in its form also the function performed by it.. The bell of the capital and of the corbel will serve as an illustration of this. To erect a leaf or an animal form, whether it be conventionalized or not, and use this leaf, animal, or human form as a structural part, or, what is still worse, for the mere purpose of a convenient transition from one part of structure to another, is contrary to the nature of art-work.
The Classical Rationalists had equally strong feelings on the subject of ornament and structure. Like Eidlitz, they acknowledged the role of perception in rational building: that certain characteristics must be articulated or exaggerated in order to make structural forces evident.
CONCLUSION
There was not, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, much agreement among theoreticians and architects as to what constituted rational building, as to how structure was related to form, or as to how construction affected style. Was architecture ornamented construction, or was it structure plus cladding? Could it be some combination of the two? Was good building solid and monolithic, or could it be veneered? What was the role of ornament: Was it the inevitable result of function? Was it the exterior expression of internal structural forces, or was it simply a language independent of its structural base? What was the role of craftsmanship in architecture: Was it most successful when least noticeable, when it achieved seamless and geometrically perfect joinery, or was this perfection degenerate? And what was craftsmanship’s relation to ornament: Was the purpose of ornament to hide poor craftsmanship, or to display good craftsmanship? In an era when craftsmanship seemed to be disappearing, should ornament disappear as well?
These questions predated the industrialization of building that took place between 1875 and 1920, and were based on the analysis of buildings constructed by archaic means. However, the ideas behind them were not abandoned when the processes of building changed. The life of forms in art and the life of ideas in art are often not the same, and many of these conceptions of good building have outlived many changes in style. A brick is still a brick; a piece of wood is still a piece of wood. Good building was and is described as solid, honest, and craftsmanlike. Even the most iconoclastic of the Modernists were seldom able to discuss construction without some knowledge of and some reference to precedent. This accounts in part for the discrepancies that occur in the examples that follow. How could the same architects be so perceptive of one phenomenon in construction and so blind to another? And how could some be so oblivious to the practicalities of realizing their ideas? The answer is sometimes, but not often, ignorance. The technological history of Modernism and of Traditionalism in the modern era is a history that is no less utopian in its technology than in its imagery.
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