Architecture You and Me: the Diary of a Development
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
S. GIEDION architecture you and me The diary of a development Harvard University Press iy;8 Cambridge, Massachusetts 1958 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-6578 FOREWORD This book is not based upon organized research. Books concerned with research into past events have to be planned and written consistently from beginning to end to clarify relationships between events and developments. No such method is possible in the case of this book. When one is standing in the midst of an evolving pe- riod, only a few signs can occasionally be traced or noted. Only later, by checking backward, can one judge whether truly constituent facts had been recognized or where the argument had gone astray. This book cannot be more than a diary of a development insofar as architecture is concerned the diary of a con- temporary observer. The development forms and reforms as new problems appear on the horizon. Evidences are set forth of the tragic conflict between the general public and the really creative artists, architects, and planners that has existed for more than a century. Some indications are then given of the ways in which this conflict is becoming resolved, or healed: some means by which the rifts can be spanned. In the realm of the architect, as in that of the painter, much has changed during the last decades. Creative spirits among the painters have attained a certain influence, and the outlook for both architecture and town planning has undoubtedly improved since the last century, when, as snails destroy a fresh green sprout, the smear of the press and the attitude of the public destroyed any new archi- tectonic beginning. But let us not deceive ourselves! Despite all, the basic situation remains at a rather low level. The prolific scale- banal architecture of less sprawl of urban growth and the rebuilt inner areas bequeath a heavy burden to posterity. in there are There are few glimpses of light; general only further chaos and stillborn buildings. considerations have been Biological, social, and economic shall the main sufficiently stressed. Here we lay emphasis the direct influence of upon a greatly undervalued factor: This is far aesthetic values upon the shaping of reality. realized. The "I like greater than is generally statement, this and I don't like that," is in many cases, perhaps in most, more decisive than first costs. Today's problem is to bridge the fatal gulf between the greatly developed powers of of those of thinking and greatly retarded powers feeling in authority, no matter to what category they may belong. Once this link has been established, the search naturally follows for the most creative designers. Here, in the field of the sciences just as much as in architecture and town can planning, it is only those gifted with imagination who find solutions to the problems facing us today. Architecture, You and Me was first published in German as vol. 18 of the Rowohlts Deutsche Enzyklopaedie under the title Architektur und Gemeinschaft (Hamburg, 1956) and our thanks are due to the Rowohlt publishing house for their permission to bring out this enlarged version of the in the book in English. Most of the material first appeared form of articles, and a list of the sources is provided at the end. Occasionally the liberty has been taken of making cuts or insertions. Margjindia providing continuity have been added between certain sections. The revision of Eng- lish texts and translation of material from German or French has been done by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt VI CONTENTS Parti. ON THE RULING TASTE tag? 2 Do We Need Artists? 1937 6 Art as the Key to Reality 1937 10 Marginalia 11 The Tragic Conflict 1936, 1955 Part 2. ON MONUMENTAUTY 22 Marginalia 25 The Need for a New Monumentality 1944 40 On Monumentally and Color, by Femand Liger 1943 48 Nine Points on Monumentality 1943 52 Some Words on Femand Leger 1955 56 Marginalia 57 On the Space-Emanating Power of Contemporary Sculpture 1949 Part 3. ON THE COOPERATION OF ARCHITECT, PAINTER, AND SCULPTOR 64 Marginalia 67 On the Force of Aesthetic Values 1947 70 Marginalia 72 Architects' Attitudes Toward Aesthetics 1947 79 Architects and Politics: an East-West Discussion 1949 91 Marginalia 93 Aesthetics and the Human Habitat 1953 * vn Part 4- ON THE FORMATION OF THE ARCHITECT 100 Marginalia 102 On the Education of the Architect 1947 105 Marginalia 106 History and the Architect 1955 Part 5. ON THE RENEWAL OF THE HUMAN HABITAT 122 Marginalia 125 The Humanization of Urban Life 1951, 1952 138 The New Regionalism 1 9 54 Part 6. ON THE DEMAND FOR IMAGINATION 154 Marginalia 157 Social Imagination 1954, 1956 178 Spatial Imagination 1954, 1956 202 Finale 207 Developments in Urban Design since 1850 213 Acknowledgments 215 Index of Names 220 Subject Index viii Part i ON THE RULING TASTE Do We Need Artists? Art as the Key to Reality The Tragic Conflict 1937 DO WE NEED ARTISTS? A widespread opinion Life today has become so rich in means of expression that art has more or less lost its earlier purpose; it has be- come absorbed into life itself. Movies, photography, radio, television the whole gamut of modern civilization has taken its place. So what is the use of artists? With a few exceptions, a serious artist can no longer make a living from his art. Either he has to be a salesman on the side, or he needs far-reaching patronage. The great pa- tron of former times has become half a dozen smaller ones. It cannot be denied that the artist of today usually lives a dog's life; and, in doing so, he conforms to another widely held opinion, that an artist has to starve to be creative! (This ethical alibi is today falser than ever.) Another opinion We certainly do not recommend a return to a primi- tive way of life. We love modern civilization. It is one of the few honest expressions of our being today. It is a part of us. But it is not the whole. A long time ago man lost the key to the inner meaning of technics, of traffic, of the daily round of his life. His inner feelings became disassociated from these, because art offi- cial art lost all contact with the life that has grown out from this civilization. No civilization can develop without those high notes that we call art. Art? Feeling? Means of expression are needed with no other apparent than to serve as containers for purpose our feelings. Every- one needs some outlet for his feelings. The outlet can be a frown, a sigh, or a voluptuous gasp. The frown is no help, since it does not banish the feeling^. They remain. They accumulate. So each man longs for an environment that is the symbol or mirror of his inner desires. Everyone longs for a prolonged satisfaction of these inner desires some more ardently, others more contentedly. There is no political platform and no community movement that has not some such symbol. There are also pseudo-symbols. These always arise when the true situation, for reasons of convenience, is concealed behind a false fagade. The history of the nineteenth century is a history of pseudo-symbols. The consequences are clear: For those matters which arise newly from the innermost depths of a period, that are thrust aside in the daily round of life, man finds no inner assurance, no guiding voice. As a result mechanization becomes rampant and life brutalized. The artist has lost contact with the public That contact has been lost between the artist and the general public needs no discussion. But it is another matter to ask whose fault this is. The artist has it thrown up to him that his vocabulary of forms is no longer generally understandable. Whose fault is this? The artist's or the public's? When this statement is made it usually means that con- tact became lost when artists turned away from naturalistic representations. A slight historical correction It is possible to establish quite accurately just when contact ceased to exist between the artist and the general craftsmen's public. When? With the dissolution of the 3 la liberti travail guilds, with the proclamation de du on restraints March 17, 1791. The abolition of all legal upon the choice of a trade left everyone free to select whatever profession he pleased. Simultaneously with this (seemingly) creative freedom the artist lost his former natural contact with the community. Industrial development and artistic detriment occurred simultaneously. In the field of art itself a rift now developed. Artists had to face the question: how shall I secure for myself the greatest possible sales? The consequence: an art was born that catered to the in public, more shameless than anything previously known history. This was the art of the Salons, of the academies of art, of the gold medals, of the Prix de Rome, of officialdom. The general public in the most general sense of this term, whether rich or poor swallowed it whole. Middle-income groups raised their tone by hanging engravings on their walls, made by skillful craftsmen; noblemen, industrialists fa- and financiers had the originals, for which they paid their vorites as much as a thousand francs per square centimeter. This was art, according to the critics appointed by the general public, who could see nothing and who had no wish to see anything. This monstrous apparatus, this art industry which took on veritable industrial dimensions, eventually proved itself to be of the utmost insignificance, though its poisonous and befuddling effect was of long endurance.