How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

And these processes of appreciation which we have acquired the habit of applying to buildings of the past, we have but to bring to bear upon the buildings of the present. For the architecture of to-day is true or false, good or bad, reasonable and admirable, not because it does or does not conform to such and such types, but because it succeeds or fails in meeting the practical and æsthetic requirements of to-day.

Need of Public Appreciation of the Art.—Hence the need of an intelligent appreciation of architecture on the part of the public. It is requisite for their own sake as well as for that of the architect. One of the great difficulties with which the latter has to contend is the ignorance and indifference not only of the public but also of official authorities. They do not give the sincere architect the encouragement of intelligent praise; they exercise no restraint upon the insincere and inefficient. They dismiss all responsibility for the result by “putting it up” to the “expert.” Architecture, in consequence, is liable to be regarded not as an art but merely as a profession. Thus aid and encouragement are given to those architects who practise it mainly or solely as a “business proposition.”

And in these days the responsibility of the public is more necessary than it ever was. For the problems of architecture are so infinitely more various and exacting, that they demand for their successful solution the co-operation of the layman. But, although people profess democratic ideas, they act in the matter of architecture as though they were living in aristocratic times, when respect was paid to birth, and not in times when we are trying to cultivate respect for common humanity. To-day, if we are true to our professed ideals, the tenement house of the worker is as important in the social scheme as the palace of the rich or the country house of the well-to-do. And it should be a subject of public concern.

Or, to consider another of the many new types demanded by modern conditions—the factory. It must meet the need of the specific industry. That is its utilitarian necessity. But there is also the humanitarian necessity that it shall be a fit place for the men and women who spend in it one-half of their waking lives. And, again, there is what we may call the communal necessity, as it affects the outside lives of the community, that the factory shall not be a thing of ugliness or drear monotony, sordidly devastating the possible beauty of the locality. For we have advanced little in civilisation if we are content to substitute for the grim castle of the Middle Ages, surrounded by its huddle of retainers’ huts, a grim fortress of industry, entrenched amid the mean homes of men and women, not considered in their individual and collective capacity as human beings, but massed under the mechanical term—“operatives.”

And what is true of the factory is true of the retail shops and department stores, city markets, warehouses, docks, and watersides, and of the hundred and one varieties of need created by modern industry and commerce. It is also as true of the provision for the cultural needs of the community in churches, schools, colleges, libraries, and museums, as well as for needs of recreation and health—theatres, concert halls, moving picture houses, dance-halls, baths, hospitals and parks. But why attempt to enumerate the innumerable problems that modern life presents to the architect? The point is that all involve sociological considerations, affecting intimately the lives of common humanity. Architecture, in fact, when properly considered and practised, is the great democratic art, which through co-operation of artist and layman, may become one of the greatest means of human betterment. How essential, therefore, that the understanding and appreciation of it should be fostered by public education!

Since this is the purpose of the present book, which only incidentally has suggested the history of the art, it is not possible or necessary to attempt to cover the modern manifestation of it in all the countries. It must suffice to allude briefly to those of Great Britain and the United States, in which architectural activity has been conspicuous, though the results are widely different.

MODERN MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

In Great Britain the modern tendency has been especially marked in the direction of independence and individuality. It began with certain movements, which perhaps might be more correctly styled fashions. There was the Queen Anne revival, which, although it involved much that was tricky and much gerrymandering in construction, drew renewed attention to the capabilities of brick and its suitability to the climate. Further, from the fact that it gained the popularity of a fashion, it encouraged the public to take some sort of interest in architecture. And this interest was further stimulated by the “Morris Movement.”

William Morris’s Movement.—It was the limitation of William Morris, that in his zeal for things Mediæval he had no toleration for any other forms of decoration. Moreover, he assumed that the art of the Middle Ages was created solely by craftsmen working in harmonious co-operation. He refused to believe that their work was controlled by a master designer and inveighed in general against architects as the cause of everything that is objectionable in subsequent architecture. In both respects, therefore, his influence was reactionary rather than helping forward. But, on the other hand, it has lasted and borne valuable fruit in promoting a regard for honest craftsmanship, on which he laid essential stress, and in reviving a recognition of the parts played by painting and sculpture and the decorative arts generally in alliance with architecture. Accordingly, one indirect result of Morris’s influence has been the increased attention given to the character and quality of simple masonry, a refreshing and salutary reaction from the notion that the interest of architecture depends on picturesque variety of detail and ornament. There was even a group of young architects who, inspired by Morris’s idea of craftsmanwork, sought to confine their designs to the simplest elements of building. They would be first, last, and all the time, builders; all precedents of architectural detail should be disregarded; they would confine themselves to the simplest abstractions of structural elements and out of these in time a new decorative vernacular might be evolved.

It is interesting to note the analogy between this aim and that of Matisse and others in painting. In both arts it represents a revolt against the sophistication and mechanicalism that are apt to result from the repetition of school-learned styles. It would dig away the surface and get down to the sub-soil, in which elemental principles are rooted, in order to encourage a growth that more nearly may conform to modern needs and ideals.