At times building methods are demonstrated simply by exposing the structure, as in the heavy timber frame, but in many styles the functions of structural systems have been interpreted by designing their members in forms that often are more explanatory than efficient. The Greek column, which is narrower at its summit than at its base, is diminished by a curve beginning slightly below the midpoint, giving it an effect of an almost muscular power to resist loads. The expression is more explicit in the caryatid, a human figure that replaces the column, and in the burdened animals and dwarfs that support the columns of Romanesque portals. Many elements in the Gothic cathedral serve as diagrams of structure: the supporting piers are clusters of shafts, each of which extends upward without interruption to become the rib of the vault, and the ribs themselves are an elucidation of technique; the flying buttress and the window tracery are elegant interpretations of their functions. In the modern steel-frame building, the hidden forms of the skeleton are often repeated on the facade to enable one to “see through” to the technique, but the system also permits the alternative of expressing the lightness and independence of the curtain wall by sheer surfaces of glass and other materials. The work of the concrete slab is made explicit by projecting indications of the placement of reinforcement or of the distribution of stresses.
Seagram BuildingSeagram Building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, 1956–58; in New York City.Photo Media, Ltd.
The expression of technique is characteristic not of all architectural styles but only of those such as the Gothic and modern, in which new techniques excite a search for the interpretive design of their materials and methods. More often than not, both materials and methods have been disguised by decorative forms or surfacing such as veneers, stucco, or paint, because of emphasis on the expression of content or of form. Most early stone architecture in Egypt, Greece, and India retained as decoration the forms developed in wooden forerunners. The precious marble of Greek temples was disguised under painted stucco, Roman brickwork was hidden by slabs of coloured marble, and 19th-century cast-iron columns were molded into classic or Gothic forms. The history of domes is filled with examples of the successful disguising of method, of giving the ponderous mass the effect of rising from the exterior and of floating from within.
Technical content was one of the foundation stones of 20th-century architectural theory, particularly in its early phases, and represented a reaction against 19th-century symbolic content. It is essential for the understanding of modern architecture that the expression of technique be seen as an art—a creative interpretation that heightens awareness of the nature of architecture. Form
In the sphere of function and technique, architects are responsible to the patterns of their culture on one hand and to the patterns of technology on the other, but, in the expression of form, they are free to communicate their own personalities and concepts. Not every architect has the gift to exercise this prerogative to the fullest. As in other arts and sciences, a few individuals generate new styles and others follow, interpreting these styles in original and personal ways. But the majority accept styles as given and perpetuate them without leaving a mark. The architect’s principal responsibility in the formation of style is to create meaningful form. When form is spoken of in the arts, not only the physical shape, size, and mass of a work are meant but also all the elements that contribute to the work’s aesthetic structure and composition. Many of these may be without a fixed form of their own—a rest in music, a line in painting, a space in architecture—and gain significance only as they are organized into the finished product. The basic formal elements of architecture in this sense are space and mass. The process of organizing these elements into an ordered form is called composition, and the principal means by which they are given expressive quality are scale, light, texture, and colour.
Space and mass
Space, that immaterial essence that the painter suggests and the sculptor fills, the architect envelops, creating a wholly human and finite environment within the infinite environment of nature. The concept that space can have a quality other than emptiness is difficult to grasp. When a building is entered, floor, supports, walls, and a ceiling are seen, all of which can be studied and perhaps enjoyed, while the space, in the sense that one is accustomed to think of it, is void: the absence of mass, filled by air.
But spatial experiences that express something are common to everyone, though they are not always consciously grasped. One feels insecure in a low cave or a narrow defile, exhilarated and powerful on a hilltop; these are psychological and motor reactions that result from measuring one’s potential for movement against the surrounding spaces, and the same reactions take root even in language (“confining” circumstances and “elevating” experiences are spoken of). An infinite variety of such reactions may be summoned by the architect, because the architect controls the limits above, below, and on all sides of the observer. People entering the architect’s space measure it in terms of the degree and the quality of their potential for movement. The concept of potentiality is important, first, because observers can anticipate where they may move merely looking about and, second, because they can conceive movements that they cannot execute. Thus, in the nave of a Gothic cathedral, the high walls closely confining the observers on two sides restrict their possible movements, suggesting advance along the free space of the nave toward the altar, or their compression forces the observers to look upward to the vaults and the light far overhead, there to feel a sense of physical release, though they are earthbound. The experience of Gothic space is called uplifting because it urges one to rise.
Bayeux, France: Gothic cathedralInterior of the Gothic cathedral, Bayeux, France.© PHB.cz/Fotolia
Renaissance space, on the other hand, attempts to balance its suggestion of movement, to draw observers to a focal point at which they can sense an equilibrium of movement in all directions, a resolution of the conflict of compression and release. At this point one feels physically at rest, at the opposite extreme from the elevating sensation of the cathedral.
Of course, one does not use the eyes alone to feel spatial quality, because only the simplest spaces—a cubic room, for example—can be wholly experienced from one standpoint. In a complex of spaces, such as that of the cathedral, the observer walks about, gaining new sensations, seeing new potentials for movement at every step. Most modern architecture, in its free organization of space sequences, demands mobility; its techniques have made it possible to remove the heavy walls and supports of the past, reducing the sense of compression. Walls become membranes to be arranged at will for spatial experience, and some are transparent and so extend one’s potential for movement into the limitless out-of-doors.