Witold Rybczynski - How Architecture Works: A Humanists Toolkit

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To the students of my freshman seminar class, who taught me to look anew at architecture through youthful eyes

Of the many doorways we pass in a short walk, most are fulfilling their purpose, most of them are well-enough built. How many are worth a second look? It seems that there is something more than merely function, something more than good construction, something more difficult to achieve, if so few can achieve it. It is precisely the pursuit of this something that makes of architecture a thing apart

Paul Philippe Cret

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A Jacobean Revival chapel that I attended in high school was my first intimate experience of architecture: timber arches, dark paneling, stained-glass windows depicting suffering Jesuit martyrsand hard wooden pews. The carved pulpit was like a focsle overlooking a sea of restless schoolboys. Exactly what makes a building memorable is hard to pin down. Its certainly not merely fulfilling a practical functionall buildings do that. Beauty? Architecture is an art, yet we rarely concentrate our attention on buildings as we do on plays, books, and paintings. Most architecture, a backdrop for our everyday lives, is experienced in bits and piecesthe glimpsed view of a distant spire, the intricacy of a wrought-iron railing, the soaring space of a railroad station waiting room. Sometimes its just a detail, a well-shaped door handle, a window framing a perfect little view, a rosette carved into a chapel pew. And we say to ourselves, How nice. Someone actually thought of that.

Despite this familiarity, most of us lack a conceptual framework for thinking about the experience of architecture. Where are we to find this frameworkin the intentions and theories of architects, in the pronouncements of critics, in some kind of pure aesthetic judgment, or in our own experience of buildings? The rationalizations of architects are usually unreliable, intended to persuade rather than to explain. The judgments of critics are frequently little more than partisan opinions. Nor are architectural terms always clear, whether it is the dentils, squinches, and ogee curves of historical styles, or the impenetrable poststructuralist jargon of the contemporary avant-garde. Of course, all professions have their technical terminology, but while television and the movies have made the languages of law and medicine familiar, the infrequent appearance of architects on the big screen is rarely enlightening, whether its the fictional Howard Roark in The Fountainhead or the real Stanford White in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing .

Why does this matter? Because architecture is for the most part a public art. Despite the medias trumpeting of signature buildings, architecture isntor at least shouldnt bea personality cult. Gothic cathedrals were not built for architecture buffs or the cognoscenti but for the medieval man in the street, who could gape at the grotesque gargoyles, be inspired by the carvings of devout saints, marvel at the glowing rose windows, or be transported by the hymns reverberating in the cavernous nave. Architecture, if it is any good, speaks to all of us.

EXPERIENCING ARCHITECTURE

What counts as architecture? In the Middle Ages the answer was simple; cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and a few public buildings were architecture, the rest was simply building. Today, the scope of architecture has broadened. Architecture is the setting for many ordinary activities, and it may be small or large, modest or grand, special or mundane. Ultimately, we recognize the spirit of architecture in any building that exhibits a coherent visual language. As Mies van der Rohe observed, Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together.

The language of built architecture is not a foreign tongueyou shouldnt need a phrase book or a users manualbut it can be complicated, since buildings must accomplish many tasks, practical as well as artistic. The architect is thinking of function as well as inspiration, of construction as well as visual expression, and of details as well as spatial effects. He must take into account the buildings long-term use as well as its immediate impact, and consider its surroundings as well as its interior environment. The architect is a sort of theatrical producer, the man who plans the setting for our lives, wrote Steen Eiler Rasmussen. When his intentions succeed, he is like the perfect host who provides every comfort for his guests so that living with him is a happy experience.

Rasmussen, a Danish architect and planner, wrote that in 1959 in his classic Experiencing Architecture . It is a deceptively simple book. My object is in all modesty to endeavor to explain the instrument the architect plays on, to show what a great range it has and thereby awaken the senses to its music. The accomplished author of numerous books on cities and urban historyand a friend of Karen BlixenRasmussen was not a polemicist. It is not my intention to attempt to teach people what is right or wrong, what is beautiful or ugly. He visited most of the buildings he described, and the bulk of the photographs in the book are his own. Experiencing Architecture takes the reader behind the scenes, so to speak, and reveals how architecture works its magic.

I was introduced to Experiencing Architecture by Norbert Schoenauer, my favorite teacher when I was an architecture student at McGill University. A Hungarian postwar refugee, he had studied under Rasmussen at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. The experience turned Schoenauer into a Scandinavian humanist, and while he taught me the craft of architecturehow to draw and plan and designhe never let me forget that buildings were foremost settings for everyday life.

In developing a conceptual toolkit for thinking about the experience of architecture, I follow in Rasmussensand Schoenauersfootsteps. Such a toolkit should reflect our daily experience of buildings, which is practical as well as aesthetic. This book moves between the two poles, sometimes emphasizing one, sometimes the other. This requires occasionally changing the focuszooming in to a small detail, zooming out to consider a building in its overall surroundings. Along the way, I aim to provide practical answers to theoretical questions or, to paraphrase James Wood, to ask a critics questions and offer an architects answers. What is the meaning of a particular form? How does a detail contribute to the whole? Why does this building touch us?

Some readers will look in vain for their favorite building. Like Rasmussen, I have generally confined myself to buildings I have visitedand buildings that have spoken to meso the range is hardly comprehensive; in any case, this is not meant to be a catalog of buildings and architects, but of ideas. My book is likewise a personal exploration, and while the Dane was a committed modernist who brought a functionalists sensibility to his task, Ive lived through both the decline and resurgencein altered formof modern architecture, and along the way have lost many of my youthful certainties. I consider history a gift, rather than an imposition, for example, and find historians to be more reliable guides than many architectural thinkers. As someone who has practiced architecture, I find it difficult to excuse technical incompetence in the name of experimentation, or to overlook functional deficiencies for the sake of artistic purity. Architecture is an applied art, and it is in the application that the architect often finds inspiration. I confess to a partiality for those who face this challenge squarely, rather than withdraw to hermetic theories or personal quests.