Initial commitHEADmain

1 files changed, 1374 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/75202-0.txt b/75202-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2775a73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75202-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1374 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75202 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                                BALBUS
+
+
+
+
+                         TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
+
+              _For the Contents of the Series see the end
+                             of the Book_
+
+
+
+
+                                BALBUS
+                                  OR
+                      THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE
+
+                                  BY
+                           CHRISTIAN BARMAN
+
+
+                                London:
+                KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd.
+                     New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+  _The same Author has also written_:
+
+
+  _THE DANGER TO SAINT PAUL’S_
+  _THE BRIDGE: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF BUILDING_
+  _SIR JOHN VANBRUGH_
+  _THE ‘RULES’ OF JAMES GIBBS_
+
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain by_
+  MACKAYS LTD., CHATHAM
+
+
+
+
+                                BALBUS
+
+
+It is often maintained that there is a similarity between architecture
+and dress in that both are applied as a covering, the one to the
+individual human body, the other to the body politic. But there is one
+thing that those who point to this similarity are not always careful
+to bear in mind, namely that it is precisely in their relation to this
+human content that the arts of architecture and dress differ most
+widely. The bodies of adult men and women are distinguished from one
+another only by a few small variations of colour and proportion. Of
+so little consequence are these departures from the universal norm
+that fashion experts are freely permitted to disregard their effect,
+and usually content themselves with saying that “trousers are worn
+narrower” and that “gowns are of pastel shades of mousseline and
+chiffon.” Having, in such observations as these, momentarily exhausted
+the subject of sartorial growth, they can do nothing but await the next
+measurement, the next material, that its guiding spirits may decree.
+What would they say, however, if they were asked to discuss the toilet
+of a greyhound, a turkey-cock or a hippopotamus, and compare it with
+the vesture appropriate to human beings? Would not the historian of
+clothes become deeply embarrassed at such an enlargement of his field
+of vision, at the sudden appearance of such a multiplicity of forms?
+Yet the scope and variety of his subject would still be as nothing
+beside the scope of architectural history, and the variety of the
+architectural forms that it is the task of this history to register,
+and anatomize, and trace back severally to their origin. For while the
+origin of sartorial form is to be discerned in the fixed and unchanging
+outline of the human body, the origin of architectural form must be
+looked for in the infinite diversity of the social organism and in the
+sweeping and rapid changes into which this organism is for ever being
+thrown. Of all architectural movements there is none, therefore, so
+irresistible in its progress or so expansive in its effect as that
+which owes its existence to a social movement. In the construction of
+the first circular cathedral window on the one hand, and Sir William
+Chambers’ experiments in Oriental design on the other, we have two
+typical events in the history of architectural form whose influence
+upon the course of this history has been far less profound than that,
+let us say, of the publication of Rousseau’s _Emile_ or the repeal of
+the laws forbidding the exportation of machinery. Had not the very
+fact of Balbus building become an index to the social condition of the
+commonwealth? Thus any change in the state of society may accelerate
+building or retard it, and may likewise alter the whole subject or
+content of a particular province of building; while events of a purely
+architectural origin and significance most often leave a record that is
+only skin-deep.
+
+But whether the movement be deep or shallow, local or enlarged, the
+historian has to consider it with just the same degree of care. While
+we expect him to give no part of his subject more than its due, on
+the other hand we insist that the ancillary and the fleeting shall be
+recorded side by side with the chief and lasting things. We do not,
+however, usually ask this of the prophet, and even were we to do so he
+would not be able to satisfy us without incurring intolerable risks.
+For the progress of an art is like the dual movement of the sea, which
+is actuated by wind and tide in mysterious combination; and between
+these two forces there is this great difference, that the one will,
+after some little study, make itself known in advance, but none but
+an ill-guided or a mendacious prophet would attempt to foretell the
+other. Tide and current are important enough when we have to construct
+a picture of past and present movement, but in our anticipation of
+the future they are our only guides. In architecture as in dress the
+position of the prophet is the same: he cannot safely predict any new
+forms save those that are moulded by the human entity these forms
+invest. The shrewdest observer of fashion would be at a loss to give
+the precise length for the masculine waistcoat of five years hence.
+Tell him, however, that about that time there will be a large demand
+for reefer suits from the New Forest ponies, and he will describe the
+design of these suits with considerable accuracy. And in architecture
+no less we must content ourselves with seizing upon social movements
+already at work, and may form our estimate of future growth only by
+projecting these movements into the architectural plane, and there
+working out their architectural equivalent.
+
+There are some, unfortunately, among prophets and historians alike
+who remain wholly or partly blind to this important truth, and who
+claim that an occasional gust of wind is all that ever disturbs the
+architectural waters upon which they keep observation. According to
+them, there has been no movement of greater consequence than are
+the ripples on a stagnant pool, nor do they encourage us to expect
+any such movement in the future. Architecture and dress are treated
+exactly alike by these imperfect observers, and the favourite topics of
+sartorial conversation invariably reappear when architecture becomes
+the subject of their talk. These topics are dimension and material,
+and it may be worth while to consider for a moment in what manner they
+are sometimes able to intrude into what would appear to be a serious
+discussion of architectural form.
+
+Everybody has heard it said at one time or another that the skyscraper
+is the building of to-morrow, and will soon lord it over the streets of
+every great city. Such a prophecy is about as likely to be fulfilled as
+a prophecy concerning the length of a garment. The size of a building
+is a matter by no means devoid of interest, but there is very little
+to help us in making a forecast of that size, and very little point in
+attempting it. Yet whole buildings have been erected on the strength
+of such a forecast. It is not surprising that such buildings have
+afterwards involved their owners in heavy pecuniary losses, losses
+far heavier, indeed, than would ever be sustained by a racehorse
+backer working on a similar method. Nor is there even the semblance
+of a reason why size should be dignified with the name of style, and
+a change of size be spoken of as though it were tantamount to the
+creation of a new formal entity. A tall building might be continued
+upwards until it reached the stars, and still we should be unable to
+describe it as a new architectural expression, an innovation in the
+domain of artistic form. The Edgware Road might, for that matter, have
+its architectural configuration carried on as far as Newcastle in the
+shape in which it runs into Oxford Street, but we should not thereby
+be entitled to hold it up as the latest thing in street design. The
+topless towers of Ilium were something new in the size of towers only,
+and not in tower design properly speaking, just as the endless street
+of Edgware would be a new thing in the size of streets only, and not in
+street design. The same confusion lurks in the statement that certain
+industrial structures put up to store large quantities of water, coal,
+grain and similar commodities exhibit the modern spirit more strikingly
+than any other kind of building. What, one may reasonably ask, is the
+difference between a coal-scuttle and a coal store, between a bucket of
+water and a tank of water, between a bottle of beer and a vat of beer?
+No doubt it is a novel experience to come upon a coal-scuttle fifty
+feet high, its bottom shaped like a cloud-burst, or a bin of barley
+large enough to hold two thousand tons. But is not the difference the
+same as the difference between the short street and the long street,
+between the four-storey building and the forty-storey building? We once
+more observe a difference of size merely; it is the shilling against
+the pound, the seven horse-power car against the seventy horse-power
+one. We have chosen to make these things larger than we have hitherto
+deemed it convenient to have them, and who shall say what size we may
+make them to-morrow?
+
+Beside this deluded belief in the importance of dimension we may
+often observe an equally fruitless concentration on material. The
+architectural forms of the future, we are told, will be determined by
+the new material of which it appears likely that this architecture
+may be built. One could just as reasonably say that an orchestral
+performance is determined by such sounds as a haphazard collection
+of instruments is likely of its own accord to emit. Nothing could
+be farther from the truth. In the present state of civilization the
+notes played by the musicians upon their instruments are determined by
+the composer’s score; the engine of a car is determined by the work
+that will be required of it; the knowledge and skill of our doctors
+are determined by the enactments of the General Medical Council; and
+the materials used in building are determined by the kind of building
+that the architect is asked to put up. In another age these things may
+have been slightly otherwise, but here and now they usually conform
+to this rule. In another age the materials with which you built, like
+the horse you rode, the cheese you ate, the doctor who attended you in
+sickness, were no doubt conditioned by your exact situation upon the
+earth’s surface, but to-day they are not so conditioned. To-day the
+industrial order of society has achieved all but the completest liberty
+to manufacture such materials as it may think suitable, and to carry
+these materials to whatever place may be chosen for their employment.
+A modern building may draw its substance from the clayfields of
+France, Spain and Belgium, the forests of Finland and Canada, the
+tar-impregnated rocks of Switzerland, the granite-quarries of Ireland
+and Sweden, and yet betray in not a single line that it is anything
+but English in descent and urban in quality. At no time in history has
+form been dependent upon material, though it may have been influenced
+by it to a greater or lesser degree, and in our own age the autonomy
+of form is more firmly established than it has been in any other age
+of which we are aware. It is hardly necessary to add that to try and
+foretell the future acceptance of a material would be even more futile
+and more hazardous than the attempt to foretell the future acceptance
+of a dimension. If we cannot determine the size that will be given to
+the buildings of to-morrow, we know at any rate what is the range of
+possible sizes from which a choice will have to be made. The range
+of possible materials, however, may be fixed with no more accuracy
+or finality than the range of possible propulsive strengths of our
+future explosives, or the range of ether movements susceptible of being
+perceived or recorded by man. The progress of modern invention shows no
+sign of becoming retarded as yet, and only when its end draws within
+sight is there a likelihood that we may be able to foretell its next
+and ultimate stage, and lay down the limits of its achievement.
+
+But if we are unable to discover what will be the size of the
+buildings of to-morrow, and of what materials these buildings will be
+constructed, we may console ourselves with the thought that the whole
+field of architecture proper remains open for us to explore at will. We
+have, for example, but to regard with some care those social movements
+which are likely to suscitate a similar movement in architecture,
+and the course of this architectural movement will gradually become
+disclosed to us. Two such social movements will here be selected and
+their immediate architectural consequences followed out. The first of
+these is the emancipation of modern woman, which has produced a new
+type of building in which the strongest architectural impulse of the
+past and the highest architectural excellence of the past are both
+conspicuously absent. The other is the determined fight that is to-day
+being put up in order to prevent the complete paralysis of street
+traffic in the great towns of Europe, and, more particularly, of the
+United States of America. The effect of this struggle is to substitute
+for the old impulse and the old excellence a new impulse and a new
+excellence, both of an inferior order, but of considerable interest
+nevertheless.
+
+The question may arise whether architectural creation can be the
+result of more than one kind of human impulse. Do not all buildings
+erected by man, it may be asked, owe their origin to the same
+unchanging desire, though the fruits of that desire may be many and
+various? The answer is that there are, indeed, two distinct forces
+at work, two separate impulses which, though most often acting in
+combination, yet are neither similar in nature nor of equal importance.
+We have only to look from Westminster Abbey to the Cenotaph in
+Whitehall to realize that these two buildings are distinguished by
+a profound difference of meaning and of intention. Let us take the
+greatest possible difference and reduce it to its simplest aspect. It
+is (we may say) the business of the architect to design buildings. But
+he may set up round about his buildings a number of lesser objects such
+as bridges, parapets, columns, fountains, and others suchlike. How do
+these two kinds of structure compare? Are they different in size only,
+and would the Cenotaph, if it were enlarged to the size of Westminster
+Abbey, become a work of architecture commensurable with the Abbey?
+Of course, it would not, for the simple reason that the Abbey has an
+_inside_. Now, it is not by chance that the words _outer_ and _inner_
+have become, in all languages, the recognized metaphorical equivalents
+of _body_ and _soul_. The usage is one that has occasionally been
+condemned by students of the logic of language, but it rests upon a
+perfectly sound foundation in that it appeals to an experience of
+universal validity, an experience which, let it be noted, is derived
+from architecture, and from architecture alone. A building is the only
+thing that you may both look into and look out of, both extraspect and
+introspect, and having learnt from the art of building thus to regard
+the human mind from two sides, as it were, we should at all times be
+careful to distinguish this dual aspect in buildings also. Now, in
+whatever manner we may describe these two views and the difference
+between them, this much is certain: that the greatest and most enduring
+qualities in architecture are those that reside in the design and
+arrangement of the internal spaces of a building, of those enclosing
+forms that are, in the last resort, the only justification of that
+building.
+
+The idea is familiar to the architect, if not perhaps in the very
+words I have used, but he has not shown himself eager to let the
+layman into the secret. How many of us have not been puzzled by the
+mysterious significance attaching to the word _plan_, and the still
+more mysterious aspect of the thing itself? What is there in a plan
+(for something there must be) that gives it this supremacy among all
+the possible representations of a building? A building worthy of the
+name of great architecture, so a simple answer might run, is invariably
+composed of a succession of spaces or cells. In this it resembles
+the human body, which is made up of just such a series――the cranial,
+thoracic and abdominal cavities, as we call them――with, in addition,
+the mechanical attachments of the limbs. And in buildings, as in the
+human body, the first essentials of beauty are to be found in the
+shape, disposition, and junction of this sequence of cells. These are
+the important facts about a building that are more fully revealed in a
+plan than in any other kind of drawing. We now know why an architect
+always hastens to record his ideas in the form of a plan――provided,
+of course, that his subject is indeed an arrangement of inhabitable
+cells. Sir Edwin Lutyens did not begin by sketching out the _plan_ of
+his Cenotaph, but he cannot have found anything except a plan of much
+use in recording his ideas for his great war memorials at Verdun and
+Arras, a multicellular disposition, each of them, of great richness and
+delicacy.
+
+    _A pair of internal casts, illustrating the development of the
+    architectural cell group. Above, a one-room dwelling-house.
+    Below, a typical small house of the Regency period. The first
+    floor has been removed, but the elliptical staircase-well with
+    its lantern-light is shown complete. The front is double-bayed
+    and the vestibule has a vaulted ceiling._
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+Let us consider for a moment how this disposition has in the course
+of time come about and how it has attained to its present complexity.
+There follows, upon cave and tent, the one-roomed cottage, so distant
+in spirit from the modern house, and yet persisting everywhere beside
+it. Under its single roof the tenants sleep, cook, eat; the very
+farmyard animals were once admitted to its shelter, as the camel and
+donkey are to-day admitted to the Egyptian fellah’s hut. One by one,
+however, this rudimentary dwelling puts forth cells as need sharpens
+and opportunity comes: the cattle are expelled to one side, the kitchen
+hearth to another, the beds to a third; cellar, larder, toolhouse
+follow. New cells have fastened themselves to the older ones; the
+house has become an organized collocation of parts; in it are found
+the elements of a plan. But, though organized, it remains haphazard
+in arrangement, what one of Jane Austen’s characters derisively calls
+“a scrambling collection of low single rooms, with as many roofs as
+windows.” Its growth is piecemeal and experimental, undirected, almost
+blind. It does not, however, remain so for ever, for man is an animal
+that learns by all that it does. In time these same elements, once
+scattered, will be measured and composed together into a house by the
+prescient mind of one who will henceforth be known as an architect.
+A greater coherence, a greater orderliness, is gradually but surely
+acquired, and from the growing power of large and orderly planning
+there spring the ultimate achievements of architecture that are the
+pride of our race. Town hall, palace, theatre, church, all these
+proceed from this same skill in the fashioning of cells and in the
+gathering of them into a reasoned whole, into a plan.
+
+    _A typical church of the Italian mid-Renaissance with one
+    large and four smaller domes. This diagram and those on p. 19
+    represent not the exterior of the building but the interior
+    space, its walls and ceilings removed, and regarded from
+    outside as a solid, on the same principle as that which governs
+    the design of the celestial globe._
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+To fashion, to gather; but at whose command? It is not for the
+architect to decide what cells there shall be; cells of what size,
+dedicated to what purpose, combined in what numbers. The architect
+is a servant only, and these things are the business of his master.
+It is when the master fails to attend to them that we get a building
+without a content, without a soul: a building that is admitted to
+the realm of architecture only on sufferance, since there is nothing
+to give its cells any particular shape, or to suggest or enforce any
+particular disposition of these cells. This is the typical building
+of to-day and to-morrow, and among the various agencies that have
+helped to bring it forth the freedom of modern woman is certainly the
+first, and is probably the most important also. There are, in addition,
+several causes of social instability that affect architecture in one
+way or another, and each of them helps to render modern building
+more uncertain, more indeterminate, or, as a biologist might say,
+more clearly lacking in morphological differentiation. On the formal
+side also (as contrasted with the functional) two lesser influences
+may be noted in passing. One is that astonishing manifestation of
+anti-æsthetic enthusiasm which has continued in more than one guise
+ever since the beginning of civilized society, but which to-day gains
+an added strength in that it has its source in the very stronghold of
+art itself. It is to be feared that Marinetti’s advice to use the altar
+of art as a spittoon has not been altogether neglected by architects,
+though their fellow artists may have taken it rather more deeply to
+heart. The other external influence is more subtle but no less active.
+It has been pointed out that only in a plan can the chief virtues of
+great architecture be adequately represented. It is a significant fact
+that the chief vehicle of architectural information to-day, the most
+popular means of recording architectural excellence, is the photograph,
+not the plan, of which it is the direct opposite. The photograph
+expresses all that the plan leaves unsaid; it ignores all save a
+small remnant of the major qualities registered in the plan, and this
+remnant it twists and falsifies to a degree which renders its testimony
+worse than valueless. We have still to be shown the photograph that,
+representing the interior of a room, will convey a modicum of reliable
+information concerning the shape of that room. For in looking at a room
+through a photograph we are, be it remembered, looking at it through
+a small hole in a box. These two factors then have, in so far as they
+enter into contact with architectural form, been clearly disruptive in
+their effect, but the influence which must next engage our attention is
+an incomparably deeper one.
+
+It is exactly half a century since the feminist movement began upon
+the career whose triumphant finish coincided with the great Peace of
+Versailles. There was in this country no feminist agitation worth
+speaking of, until the signal was given by the Reform Bill of 1876.
+In the very same year the late John Wanamaker, who had for some time
+been in business in Philadelphia as a dealer in men’s and boys’
+clothing, discovered that women seemed prepared to do a certain amount
+of shopping on their own account. He opened a new department, which
+became the foundation of his later successes. Where men had walked
+rapidly in and out, mindful only of the tie or the pair of boots they
+had come to buy, a long procession of women wound its way from counter
+to counter, dismayed by the many omissions in their shopping list, and
+grateful to find how easily these omissions were to be repaired. The
+small band of women workers marching to victory was followed by an
+army of shoppers a hundred times more numerous, and of such energy and
+enterprise that men’s clothing departments were everywhere incorporated
+into their already extensive domain. The allegiance of the whole
+body of women must have been coveted for some time, for even in the
+early years of the nineteenth century the big west-end drapers would
+clothe an eligible debutante in their choicest productions, generously
+relying upon her to find a husband who could afford to pay her bills.
+But though the bait was ready, its opportunity had still to be found,
+and when the feminist movement at last provided it the large drapers’
+store leapt forward, and the two revolutions went on together in a
+simultaneous advance. The first act of public violence was committed
+by the adherents of feminism in 1909, and as the stones went crashing
+through the windows of the Government offices in Whitehall, the newly
+erected windows of Mr. Gordon Selfridge became the cynosure of the
+more pacific among feminine eyes. It will be necessary later on to
+consider the influence of modern woman from other angles of view, but
+we may be sure that from none of these has it been more potent or more
+remarkable, for as a consumer of wealth she is transforming the design
+of our buildings more thoroughly than is clear even to-day.
+
+Very few years elapse before the large new drapery store assumes the
+characteristic form that will gradually impose itself upon many of
+our other buildings. It is realized almost at once that no external
+wall must cut off the ground floor of the building from the pavement
+of the street, for the business can only succeed if the undreamt-of
+collection of goods is amply and seductively displayed to the feminine
+passer-by. For some time experiments were made (notably by the Leonhard
+Tietz stores in Germany) with buildings clothed in glass from top
+to bottom, but, though German architects are still toying with the
+idea, the familiar stretches of undivided glass are nowadays applied
+to the ground floor only. Inside the buildings, however, no walls
+are wanted at any point, on any of the floors, and there we find
+large open spaces offering no obstruction to the view, and allowing
+counters and show-cases to be moved backwards and forwards with the
+capricious tides of fashion. No longer is the building composed of an
+expressive sequence of definitely formed cavities; there is only layer
+upon layer of formless space, tier upon tier of vacant sites, along
+which the hundred specialized departments may pitch their glittering
+booths. It no more resembles a piece of major architecture than does
+a market-place covered with awnings and sunshades. It has become, in
+fact, a flight of hanging market-places piled one upon the other,
+rising high into the air, and delving many yards into the ground.
+
+The constituent parts of this type of building are fourfold. There are
+the floors themselves; and there are the props necessary to support
+these floors. There is the covering, opaque or transparent, in which
+the top and sides are wrapped to protect the contents from the weather.
+Lastly, there is the private road which runs through the building from
+top to bottom. This road belongs to the modern composite type about
+which a little more still requires to be said. Let us here but observe
+that, reared on end and pointing upward, it allows visitors to ride
+or walk from one level to another, while at the same time it contains
+within itself the numerous pipes and conduits through which water,
+heat and electrical energy are delivered to each floor, and the sewage
+carried away from it and discharged into the public drain.
+
+    _Part of a modern commercial building, divested of its outer
+    wall curtain and with the supporting metal framework removed.
+    The U-shaped floor-platforms are, as it were, threaded on the
+    vertical road, in which are contained the lifts and stairways
+    and the various kinds of conduits. (Woolworth Building, New
+    York, by Cass Gilbert.)_
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+The new eviscerated architecture, once invented by the builder of
+the drapery store for his regiments of feminine customers, did not
+take long to gain a very considerable following. Indeed, it could not
+have had a more auspicious place of origin. As the bee carries the
+pollen from flower to flower, so the no less indefatigable draper
+carried the seeds of this architecture into the streets of every town
+of importance. We need only remind ourselves of the manner in which
+he is pressing forward to-day in the West End of London, transmuting
+with golden wand the whole of Regent Street, large portions of Oxford
+Street, and a great deal of Kensington and Bayswater, into something
+very rich and, as I have tried to show, not a little strange. Richest
+of all, perhaps, is the colonnade in Oxford Street whose relation to
+the rest of London is the relation between the majestic bulk of a
+transatlantic liner and the diminutive proportions of the fleet of
+tugboats that surrounds her. The modern drapery store is as large as
+it is ubiquitous, and its wealth and power are consonant with these
+outward signs of importance. The Wanamaker store, of which I have
+already spoken, provides an interesting example of the eminence to
+which these establishments have to-day attained. Everybody is aware
+of the interest displayed by publications such as the _Daily Mail_
+in the building and equipment of the suburban home, an interest
+which it would appear not unprofitable for them to indulge. The New
+York Wanamaker store, however, opened in October, 1925, a great and
+fascinating exhibition devoted exclusively to the future development
+of the city of New York. The first, to my knowledge, of its kind to be
+held anywhere, such an exhibition argues a sense of responsibility, a
+foresight, courage and public spirit that would be hard to parallel
+in any kind of business. Most of all, of course, it points to a very
+considerable degree of affluence, for the exhibition itself was
+accompanied by a wide and intensive publicity campaign in the New York
+Press. A commercial house that can afford to take such pains towards
+the popularizing of architectural and town-planning development schemes
+may claim to be a fairly important institution and an opulent patron
+of the arts. Both the importance and the opulence have been conferred
+upon the drapery store by the emancipated women of to-day.
+
+The possibilities of open-floor design for all kinds of building were,
+then, abundantly exhibited and widely perceived. From shop and factory
+the new device spread to the office block, whose claim to be in the
+modern movement is not usually admitted unless it consists of the same
+succession of shelf-like floors suspended round a central road. Schools
+and universities have already subscribed to the principle of unformed
+and undivided space. An appeal recently issued on behalf of the
+University of Pittsburg opens with the statement that 14,460,000 cubic
+feet of space are required for the University to discharge its normal
+functions. I cannot forbear to mention that one of the objects of the
+new buildings is (so the appeal goes on to tell us) to commemorate “the
+achievers of Pittsburg” and to testify to their “records of tonnage
+production.” The idea of perpetuating Pittsburg tonnage production in
+14,460,000 cubic feet of University is not without a pleasing logic of
+its own.
+
+And what of the house and home? Are we to meet there, too, with the
+same undefined vacuity, the same absence of internal form? Already a
+Dutch architect has built a house with nothing inside its four outer
+walls except an upper floor to which an open stairway gives access.
+The upper and lower floors are subdivided by means of movable screens,
+which enable the owner to arrange his rooms according to the fancy of
+the moment, and, I suppose, to adjust his houseroom to the measure of
+his hospitality. This is, of course, how houses are mostly constructed
+in Japan, but it should be remembered that, though the Japanese house
+is built entirely without walls, whether internal or external, it yet
+exhibits the utmost complexity and formal refinement in the general
+lines of its design. The plan is there, though only its skeleton is
+permanent, and wall-divisions are made movable for another reason
+than that which is causing them to vanish from our Western buildings.
+Moreover, the Japanese house is of one storey only, and if the open
+floor is likewise to establish itself for good in our own domestic
+architecture, it will probably be restricted with us also to the
+one-storey dwelling, to bungalow and town flat. But even in these the
+outer walls and windows will, of course, remain――at any rate until we
+acquire the hardy constitution of the Japanese, to whom a paper screen
+is sufficient protection in all weathers.
+
+The breakdown of the principal architectural impulse is complete the
+moment the function of a building is expressed in an undifferentiated
+mass of cubic feet. It is at this moment that the second great
+movement, the movement which is to substitute a new external impulse
+for the old internal one, first becomes manifest. This movement
+springs, it will be recalled, from the threatened failure of our
+communications, a failure which is due, however, to no deficiency
+in these communications themselves, but to the vast and unequal
+overcrowding of modern cities. And the great increase of our populations
+that is the principal achievement of the nineteenth century presents
+three aspects, each one of which requires at this point to be carefully
+borne in mind.
+
+First, the growth of population was not uniformly distributed, but went
+on far more swiftly in the great towns of Europe and America than it
+did throughout the countryside. Thus, while the population of England
+and Wales increased by about 90 per cent. between 1861 and 1921,
+the corresponding advance for London was about 133 per cent., while
+Berlin and New York went up by 500 and 600 per cent. respectively.
+The difference, however, is a diminishing one, having been far greater
+throughout the second half of the nineteenth century than it is to-day.
+Our English urban population, for example, grew during the decade
+1870–1880 at a rate which was nearly 200 per cent. in excess of the
+rate of growth of the rural population. The first decade of the present
+century shows an excess in the urban rate over the rural of only 10 per
+cent.
+
+Our second observation is this: that during the time when it was at
+its highest point, the rate of growth of the urban population rose
+too rapidly for the concomitant growth of building to keep pace with
+it. The result was that the growth of building fell into arrears, and
+that such arrears still in part remain to be made good to-day. As the
+inhabitants became more numerous so the shortage of houses became
+more acute, until at last an ugly and even dangerous congestion of
+human beings began everywhere to show itself. This congestion would
+never have existed if the rate of building had been equal to the rate
+of growth of the population; swift as it was, the rate of building
+could never become swift enough. A similar condition, though due to a
+different cause, prevailed after the great Fire of London, when Wren
+himself was driven to denounce the ill effects that flowed from “the
+mighty demand for the hasty works of thousands of houses at once.” Now,
+it is a commonplace that the growth of building may proceed in two
+directions, but it is not always realized that the two kinds of growth
+must proceed together, that each has its appointed function which the
+other is powerless to discharge. The growth of a town _outward_ at its
+periphery is necessary, and the _upward_ growth of its central region
+is also necessary. The first was the chief concern of the town-planning
+of yesterday and to-day, which unfortunately failed to carry out its
+appointed task. The second is likely to become the chief concern of the
+town-planning of the immediate future. Let us hope that it may be more
+fortunate.
+
+These two growths are identical in one respect. Each of them remains,
+like all forms of growth known to science, entirely normal and
+beneficial so long as it is correctly regulated. We know that the growth
+of different parts of our body is regulated by means of chemical
+substances known as hormones, and that where certain hormones are
+lacking, or present in excess, we get the dwarf and the giant, goitre
+and cretinism. When it happens to the builders of a city that, in the
+happy phraseology of a seventeenth-century pamphlet, “the Magistrate has
+either no power or no care to make them build with any uniformity,” they
+at once become the agents of a growth that is just as abnormal, just as
+obnoxious, as these physiological ones. It would seem, as the nineteenth
+century has taught us, that the power of regulating architectural growth
+begins to fail when that growth exceeds a certain measure of speed and
+urgency. Clearly, as the rate of growth increases, so the regulating
+power must also increase if it is to retain an effective control over
+building, for if it fails to increase in a similar ratio its influence
+must come to an end. This is what has happened all too often. Nor,
+haphazard and ungracious as the growth of building has been throughout
+the whole of Western civilization, has it anywhere been more irregular
+than at those points where it has moved most swiftly, and where the
+demands of the expanding population have reached the utmost severity of
+pressure. We are often told that New York is a city of high buildings.
+It is nothing of the kind: it is a moderately low city disfigured by
+_a few_ high buildings only. Not more than one building in every
+thousand in the Manhattan Island district, famous for its skyscrapers,
+exceeds twenty storeys in height. Nor should it be forgotten that the
+_average_ height of buildings in New York is exactly the same as that
+obtaining in London, and rather less than the height of buildings in
+Paris. But while the upward growth of the two European cities has by no
+means been uniform and harmonious, it has not attained to the
+astonishing irregularity that receives such unmerited praise from
+English visitors to New York. It is the irregularity that is of
+consequence, and the source of this irregularity lies, on the one hand,
+in the sharp and unequally resisted strain put upon building by its
+effort to overtake the rate of increase of population, and, on the
+other, in the complete or partial breakdown of proper civic control,
+and the renunciation of the civic standard in building.
+
+The third fact that has to be recorded in connection with the growth of
+our populations is a curious one. While the growth of building merely
+tended to become proportionate to the growth of the population, it was
+necessary that the means of communication should increase at a much
+faster rate. The more people there were, the more often and the more
+rapidly these people were compelled to move about from one place to
+another. Thus, while the inhabitants of Europe and America multiplied,
+let us say, like the interest gathering upon a fixed capital sum, the
+movement of these inhabitants, of their various belongings, their
+food and drink, the materials and products of their labour, the waste
+left over from their individual and corporate metabolism, all this
+movement grew in scope, volume and swiftness in the manner of compound
+interest, or like a snowball enlarging itself into an avalanche. It
+is impossible in these pages to examine this mysterious law in any
+detail, but an example of its working may perhaps be given. It was
+stated just now that during the sixty years 1861–1921 the population
+of England and Wales increased by about 90 per cent., or, roughly,
+from twenty millions to thirty-eight. Many figures might be quoted to
+illustrate the growth of communications during the same period, but
+those yielded by the Post Office, at whose enterprising hands this
+growth took origin, will be enough for our purpose. We find, then,
+that the annual postal revenue of this country had, in the year 1921,
+increased to forty-five millions from four millions in 1861, an advance
+of 1025 per cent. If this is the rate at which our communications must
+expand, no wonder the London traffic authorities complain that the
+more facilities they are able to provide, the greater becomes the
+demand made upon those facilities. Startling as the Post Office figures
+may seem, if we could as readily estimate the growth of the total
+movement along our roads, including not only pedestrian and vehicular
+traffic, but the transmission of water, fuel, and sewage, and of
+written and spoken messages as well, we should find the growth yet more
+considerable. Nor should we be surprised at the long, heroic struggle
+of nineteenth-century scientists and legislators to perfect this great
+and complicated thing, the modern road, or marvel to see them extend
+it hither and thither, and guard it from encroachments, and level and
+straighten out its trajectory, and search out a firm foundation for
+it, and render its surface hard and impervious, and dry it, clean it,
+illuminate it, and at last equip it for the automatic distribution of
+water and fuel, and for a continuous scavenging of all our towns.
+
+It is this remarkable achievement of civilized man that to-day
+threatens to become ineffective. No sooner had the growth begun than
+it became clear that a keen rivalry between buildings and roads was
+inevitable, and further that unless the balance between these two
+were jealously maintained, the result to the road, so necessary to
+the life of our civilization, would be disastrous. The first half of
+the nineteenth century saw the passing of innumerable private Acts
+connected with roadmaking, and in 1848 the famous Public Health Act
+set up a considerable national machinery, since improved and extended
+by many later measures. The Public Health Act has, in point of fact,
+two objects. While the more important of these is to ensure the
+quick, safe and efficient development of the roads, the Act was also
+designed to ensure that the growth of new buildings should not, in its
+headlong speed, fall below a decent standard of strength, comfort and
+cleanliness. But all this time the road remains the special care of
+the authorities, for, while in their capacity of building controllers
+they merely inspect and sanction such work as is being done by private
+enterprise, they themselves undertake the making and mending of roads
+with increasing pertinacity. Nor would their work have shown the
+smallest sign of failure were it not for the abnormal and unregulated
+growth of our large cities, a growth which has now reached a stage at
+which the roadmaker must assume a measure of control if the traffic in
+our streets is to continue in motion.
+
+The control of buildings is no new thing. In addition to the measures
+enacted to safeguard the integrity of the road-space we have had, for
+several centuries, the right to protest against a building being put
+up for a purpose that may be considered noxious. Not only has this
+right been enforced directly by means of legislation, but the State
+has made itself responsible for seeing that such undertakings as are
+entered into between landowner and tenant are carried out to the
+letter. If anyone proposed to erect a poison-gas factory in Grosvenor
+Square, his neighbours would have immediate power to restrain him,
+while a fruiterer’s shop could only be expelled if its owner were
+found to violate the conditions under which the land is granted. The
+law, however, upholds such conditions, and by these two means manages
+to exercise a considerable measure of _user control_, as it is now
+commonly called. Now, zoning is, by its very name, a comprehensive
+system of user control of this same kind. In so far, however, as
+it merely forbids the erection of a certain class of building in a
+stated zone, it can scarcely be said to influence architectural form.
+The true architectural importance of zoning lies in the fact that,
+the town-planner having failed adequately to control the _height_ of
+buildings, it places in the hands of the roadmaker “emergency” powers
+enabling him to control their _capacity_.
+
+He cannot, however, hope to do this justly and usefully without
+paying due regard to the use or function of each building at the same
+time that he inquires into its capacity, and this dual control is in
+fact the peculiar object of the roadmaker in his quality of zoning
+controller. Let me give an example of how he goes to work. It has been
+calculated by the committee which is preparing the development plan
+for the New York region that one mile of theatres is the cause of a
+daily traffic movement of 36,000 vehicles. The corresponding figure for
+a street of suburban shops is only one-fourth as high, while a mile
+of factories of ordinary size is responsible for a mere 600 vehicles.
+On the other hand, the rapid development of labour-saving machinery
+is daily increasing the output of modern factories, and has, during
+the last seven years, more than doubled the amount per worker of
+goods traffic going in and out of the average American workshop. In
+addition to the moving vehicles, the stationary ones, too, require to
+be considered, though a time is no doubt approaching when the parking
+of cars on public ground will be forbidden in most large towns. The
+worst aspect of this subsidiary problem is, of course, presented
+by places of amusement, whose audiences are acquiring the motor-car
+habit even more rapidly than the community as a whole. Not many years
+will elapse before American theatre and concert audiences habituate
+themselves to the motor-car to the exclusion of any other vehicle,
+and when this condition has been reached the mile of theatres already
+referred to will require a strip of land over a hundred feet wide along
+its entire length, in order to make room for the lines of waiting cars.
+Fortunately the motor-car has not yet attained such wide patronage in
+our own country, but anyone who will stroll down the narrow streets on
+the west side of Shaftesbury Avenue, say between the hours of eight
+and ten, on a week-day night, must conclude that with us also the
+difficulties are fast growing acute.
+
+What is the solution to this knot of related problems? We can only
+reach it if we calculate the capacity of each building, multiply this
+figure by its traffic-producing coefficient, and then set this figure
+against the capacity of the surrounding streets. Difficult as these
+computations may appear, they yet are entirely feasible. Upon them is
+founded the science of zoning, a science which is as yet so imperfectly
+understood by the majority of us that it has been necessary to
+describe its origin and purpose in some detail. We may now go on to ask
+what is likely to be its effect on the architecture of the immediate
+future. The answer is one which may appear to contradict itself.
+Devised for the purpose of protecting the street from the undue growth
+of its buildings, the zoning ordinance must tend before all else to
+encourage the growth in size of the average individual building, and to
+grant it a measure of formal autonomy which will rapidly destroy the
+few remaining vestiges of coherent street design.
+
+A height restriction, such as those in force in England, is founded
+upon a conception of civic order, but it may in addition have one
+of three practical objects. It may be designed to prevent unstable
+construction, or to ensure that the surrounding area is not unduly
+darkened, or to allow a jet of water to sweep over the roof in an
+outbreak of fire. The zoning ordinance is concerned with none of these
+things. Its object is to regulate capacity alone, and this it does by
+drawing an inclined line upward from the centre of the street, thus
+fixing an angle within which the outline of the building is forced to
+remain. Now, it is in the first place to be observed that rapidly
+sloping walls are as impracticable as they are unsightly in buildings
+of great height. It follows that the ordinance may best be complied
+with by breaking up the façade into receding vertical planes, each
+separated from the next by a narrow terrace. And the larger is the
+site occupied by a building thus falling back along a fixed angle, the
+higher this building will be allowed to reach, for in a triangle of
+which the angles remain constant the height will vary as the base. In
+the second place, a building measuring more than, say, sixty or seventy
+feet in depth will require an open area to provide it with an adequate
+supply of light and air. In a skyscraper of the old-fashioned type it
+was the custom to place this area at the centre of the building, which
+became a quadrangular box, encircling the four sides of a deep central
+void. But it is at its centre that a building erected under the zoning
+ordinance is allowed to reach its maximum height. To give up this part,
+more valuable than any other, for the necessary area would of course be
+folly, and the area is, in consequence, placed where the sacrifice of
+useful volume will be smallest, that is to say, at the periphery of the
+building, in such a manner as to lie open to the street.
+
+    _A zoned building, consisting of an H-shaped arrangement of
+    parallelepipeds with two external areas. The influence of the
+    American zoning law is visible in the upper part only. It
+    accounts for the stepping-back of the central block and the
+    octagonal tower that surmounts each corner. (Fraternity Clubs
+    Building, New York, by Murgatroyd and Ogden.)_
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+A building erected under the zoning ordinance will, therefore, occupy
+as much ground as its promoter is able to buy with borrowed money,
+and will, wherever possible, spread itself over the entire area of a
+city block, so that it is bounded by a street on all four sides. Its
+outline will, in addition, present two striking characteristics. It
+will rise on all sides in a succession of receding stages gathered
+at the summit in a central tower-like mass which, provided its area
+does not exceed a prescribed limit, may itself escape the restraining
+influence and rise unhindered. And while at each corner the street wall
+itself is brought to the full height permissible under the ordinance,
+the central part of each façade will be recessed so as to form one or
+several open courts or areas. At the moment of writing, London is about
+to witness the completion of its first building designed along these
+lines. Why the American zoning regulations should have been made to
+govern the design of the new Devonshire House building in London is not
+excessively clear, but this interesting piece of work does at any rate
+provide a valuable illustration of the laws of growth to which American
+architecture will in future be subject. For this reason it is by far
+the most interesting and the most characteristically modern of our
+large new buildings. There is just now a curious tendency to describe
+as modern a small number of structures whose windows are treated in
+accordance with a short-lived æsthetic fashion of thirty years ago.
+Devonshire House furnishes proof that architecture is able to be more
+modern than that, for here the new zoning ordinance is, for the first
+time in London, shown actively at work.
+
+    _A zoned building, more recent than the last, showing
+    the American zoning law in full operation. The central
+    parallelepiped here runs across the two others, thus forming
+    six external areas separated by six buttress-like projections.
+    Each of these projections is stepped back in obedience to the
+    zoning law. (Bell Telephone Building, St. Louis, by Russell and
+    Crowell.)_
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+We may now see why it was remarked that zoning had substituted a new
+architectural impulse for the governing impulse of internal form to
+which we owe the major masterpieces of architecture. A zoned building
+can never be a masterpiece in the same sense as these. You cannot
+compare a zoned building to Chartres Cathedral, any more than you can
+compare a suit of clothes to a paper-weight. The form of the one is
+dictated by something working from inside outwards, while the form of
+the other is the result of an agency working upon the surface from
+without. The paper-weight may be as beautiful in its way, but its
+beauty does not arise, as the beauty of clothing arises, from its
+power to invest the human form with an apt, expressive and dignified
+integument. In the same manner the zoned building may be beautiful, but
+not with the beauty of the greatest architecture, which consists in
+the fashioning of a dwelling-place, human or divine, in such a manner
+as to guard and delight those who enter into it. The zoned building
+is, I repeat, like the University of Pittsburg, a matter of cubic feet
+piled up around a private road. Any new formal impulse that may control
+its growth resides in the street without; any new formal excellence it
+may exhibit has for its origin the directing authority of this street.
+But in spite of the inferior quality of its products, it is easy to
+see that the zoning ordinance holds out a considerable promise to the
+architecture of the future, supplying a fresh and vigorous motive in
+the place of an older that is rapidly failing, and setting up the
+authority of reason where caprice alone now rules.
+
+Before we leave this subject, a word may perhaps be added concerning
+the limitations of this method of control. It clearly cannot be applied
+everywhere with equally pleasing results. A town or a district in which
+the streets run at right angles to one another will show it at its
+best, for there, and there only, will it be possible for the defining
+lines to meet with any degree of regularity. London buildings, too,
+have sometimes to conform to a stipulated angle, though for another
+reason than those of New York. But the irregularity of our streets, and
+the narrowness of most of our building frontages, have caused these
+controlling angles to become a source of grotesque heterogeneity and
+ugliness instead of allowing them to establish a new kind of order.
+Nor should our town be one containing sites excessively large, or have
+some of its streets so narrowly spaced as to produce sites that are
+sensibly smaller than the average. The larger area will permit of too
+great a building height, the smaller of too little, and it would appear
+necessary that the “street block” should, in addition to a regular
+outline, observe an approximate equality of size also. Founded upon
+these two equalities, the zoning ordinances proceed to build up an
+equality of height, of content, which in its turn begets yet another
+that is the guarantee of their ultimate success. For nothing will
+prosper in America that does not pay, and fortunately zoning has been
+found to pay, and to pay very handsomely. The “realtors” of the big
+American towns did not take long to discover that, while the building
+of a skyscraper must enhance the value of the surrounding land, this
+enhancement is considerably greater where the growth is controlled than
+where it is left free to congest, and stifle, and darken, as in the
+licence of nineteenth-century New York. To the neighbouring landowner
+an unregulated skyscraper, if it pointed to a new opportunity, was
+at the same time an evil and a discouragement, for, if all buildings
+simultaneously went up to those same heights, would they not mutually
+destroy one another? The zoning ordinance has thus become a part of
+the republican policy of the United States, under which a competitive
+society is made to bring forth numbers rather than eminence, and
+watches over these its children with democratic solicitude.
+
+We have examined with some care the evolution of wheeled traffic and
+the changes its multiplication must inevitably bring about in the
+appearance of our streets. Is not flying, it may be asked, always
+described as the locomotion of the future, and is not the shape of
+our buildings likely to reflect so important a development? The first
+part of this question would take us beyond the scope of the present
+essay, but the answer to the second part may perhaps form the subject
+of a digressive paragraph. One might reasonably say that the design
+of a building is likely to respond to the needs of aerial traffic in
+three ways only, but not in any way that is likely to be of great
+consequence. The first possibility is that a building may be required
+providing means whereby aeroplanes are enabled to make a safe landing
+on its roof. A flat roof of ample dimensions thus becomes necessary,
+and yet we have seen that one of the effects of the zoning ordinance
+is to break up the roof surface of a building into a series of narrow
+ledges. A building upon the top of which it is desired to bring an
+aeroplane to land will, therefore, in those places where zoning
+prevails, need to be conspicuously low. Possibly a roof may here and
+there be projected outward beyond the walls of a building, an expedient
+whose drawbacks are such that it is unlikely to be often adopted. In
+any case it will be necessary to provide an entrance to the building
+from this roof, but there is nothing very new about that. The second
+possibility is that the aeroplane may have to be lowered from the
+roof of the building to the street level. The easiest way of making
+this descent is (to quote from a newspaper advertisement of the great
+Wanamaker exhibition to which I have referred) by “corkscrewing down
+the exterior of the building.” One of the great mural cartoons included
+(side by side with a Ford “family aeroplane”) in this exhibition shows
+an enormous cylindrical tower, encircled by a descending spiral,
+very much like a corkscrew in appearance. This tower is not, however,
+an ordinary city building, but, reaching high above the concourse of
+these, a special structure surmounted by a mooring mast for dirigibles.
+Happily the building has yet to be designed that will, while giving
+shelter, however unworthy, to human beings, wrap itself in a broad
+fire-escape for the convenience of corkscrewing aeroplanes. And there
+is, on the whole, no ground for supposing that our urban architecture
+will at any time pay so exorbitant a regard to the advance of the
+aeroplane as to transform itself in this manner.
+
+But it will be remarked that aerial travel is bound to call into being
+a number of buildings of a special kind, devoted to this one purpose
+alone. May we expect such buildings to be as novel and as eminently
+characteristic as the Wanamaker cartoon would appear to suggest? It
+is difficult to believe that among them there will be anything more
+unusual than the dirigible hangar, which is already a familiar sight,
+and which, to do it justice, has a peculiar interest in that it is the
+only modern building whose purpose contains an unanswerable argument
+for a roof vaulted throughout its entire breadth. The hangar built at
+Orly by the French engineer Freyssinet is perhaps the example best
+known in this country; if it is not, it certainly deserves to be. But
+though the rounded shape of a balloon clearly demands a vaulted roof,
+there is no reason why such roofs should not be used elsewhere, as
+they have in fact been used for many centuries; and in his Utrecht
+Post Office the Dutch architect Crouwel has given us a building that,
+stripped of its great clock and its counters and other furnishings,
+might easily be mistaken by a wandering dirigible for its accustomed
+lair. Striking though the appearance of the Orly hangar may be found,
+it would scarcely be fair to attribute its success to the peculiar
+function it so efficiently discharges. And if this is all that the
+dirigible balloon is likely to do for architecture, what shall we
+say of the aeroplane? It would appear that only when practising the
+movement described by our American friends as “corkscrewing” will
+the aeroplane need the help of the architectural innovator. Till
+then we must remain content to see it inhabit a structure hardly
+distinguishable from the coach-house of our forbears.
+
+The prospect opened to us by aerial locomotion is limited, for
+no matter how high our winged vehicles may one moment soar, they
+cannot approach the earth without losing much of their glamour and
+strangeness. Let us turn instead to the far more considerable factor
+which came before us at the beginning of this essay. The emancipation
+of modern woman was there glanced at in only one of the three aspects
+of which the two others have still to be regarded. We saw how, as a
+consumer of wealth, she has been instrumental in withdrawing the art of
+building from the light of its central inspiration, and depriving it of
+the most highly treasured of its resources. As a producer of wealth,
+her influence has perhaps been less momentous, but it is by no means
+to be disregarded, for the modern dwelling-house exhibits the fruits
+of it in almost every detail of planning and equipment. So profound
+are the changes it has suffered that a medium-sized house, built, say,
+three generations ago, and left in its original state, presents almost
+insuperable difficulties to the housewife of to-day. Its cavernous
+succession of kitchens and larders, its monumental boiling ranges, its
+numberless stairs and endless dim passages, all of these things must
+fall into desuetude, unless a regiment of muscular girls and women is
+enlisted to maintain order among them. We all know how in the leisurely
+age of our great-grandmothers a house was much more loosely, more
+vaguely planned, with nothing resembling the meticulous precision that
+is brought to bear upon it to-day. It was not necessary in those days
+to measure the distance the housewife had to walk in order to put the
+dinner on the table, for the walk was one which she was never called
+upon to take. There was no need to place a roomy and well-ventilated
+linen-cupboard close to the principal bedrooms, for the bedroom linen
+might be kept anywhere and fetched from anywhere without inflicting
+appreciable hardship upon the housewife. But wide though the gulf may
+be that divides the modern house from that of the early nineteenth
+century, the novelty of the former would not be nearly so apparent
+were it not for the much broader gulf by which it is divided from
+that of a generation later. During the second half of the century the
+romantic revival was scattering over the country a number of houses
+whose unpracticalness was so gigantic that they could only strike
+the beholder completely dumb. The labyrinth at Knossos being at that
+time still undiscovered, these structures are generally presumed to
+derive from the cathedrals and dungeons of the Middle Ages. It is by
+comparison with these preposterous inventions that the post-war house
+stands out in a yet more appealing and more individual light. Instead
+of losing purpose and definition, like the typical city building, it
+has gained vastly in both these qualities, and it has gained because,
+from being the scene of the housewife’s activities, it has become her
+instrument and ally, and sometimes (it must be admitted) her accomplice
+even.
+
+The next step, indeed, has already been taken. It is possible even now
+to watch the modern residence gradually assuming the properties of a
+machine. At the beginning of the last century nine-tenths of the cost
+of a house went into the structure, while the remaining tenth paid for
+its fixtures and equipment. Nowadays we spend almost as much on drains
+and plumbing, on baths and closets, on bedroom lavatory basins supplied
+with hot water, on central heating, electric light, telephones and
+suchlike, as we spend on the building of the house. So remarkable has
+been this development that an American writer has prophesied a period
+when houses will be given away free with the plumbing. It is doubtful
+whether such munificence will ever become a commercial possibility, but
+the prophecy contains more than a modicum of truth. We may reasonably
+expect to see all but the most indispensable furniture done away
+with in the small house of to-morrow, while its walls, ceilings, and
+doors will assume a blankness and roundedness that has hitherto been
+thought needful only in the operating chambers of our hospitals. In
+order still to reduce the housewife’s labours, the apartments will
+be brought together in those vast blocks that are meeting with such
+strenuous opposition from private householders in the United States,
+an opposition to which the zoning authorities have almost invariably
+given every support. What is the reason for this opposition? It is
+that a new apartment house will (in the words of a recent American
+Court pronouncement) “increase the fire hazard” of the district upon
+which it intrudes, and will be “creative of noises from autos, taxis,
+milk wagons, drays, etc., in a locality where peace and quiet now
+prevail; it will obstruct light and air, and sooner or later it will
+bring with it the immoralities which always attend the building of
+such structures.” The list of its potential misdeeds goes on, but I
+have quoted at sufficient length to show what are the conditions to be
+expected when the house is supplanted by large, noisy, and efficient
+machines, which none but the richest and the poorest may altogether
+elude.
+
+Is it inevitable that they will be so supplanted? The displacement
+is steadily going on, and the scope and rapidity of the process must
+depend upon the eagerness with which modern woman sets herself to pluck
+the fruits of liberty that are now so compliantly brought within her
+reach. It should be borne in mind, however, that the mechanization
+of the house is inspired by a purpose diametrically opposite to that
+entertained by the pioneers of modern methods in industry. The triumph
+of the powerloom over the handloom was conditioned by its ability to
+produce so many more yards of material than the handloom could be made
+to yield. But while the machine was introduced into the industrial
+world in order to multiply the products of labour, the object of the
+modern house is to diminish the necessity for labour. By exchanging the
+handloom for the powerloom the weaver could, while still taking the
+same amount of trouble, produce a greater result, but when the modern
+housewife moves into a labour-saving flat her object is by taking
+considerably less trouble to produce the same result as before. How
+and where she spends the hours of leisure thus acquired is a question
+which does not bear upon our present argument, except in so far as this
+leisure has enabled her to raise the drapery store to the exalted
+place it occupies to-day, and by this means to divert the trend of
+modern architecture in the direction which we have just been following.
+
+It is, then, largely by virtue of her new position as a producer that
+the woman of to-day has become able to exercise such a signal influence
+in her quality of consumer of wealth. But from both these points of
+view we may perceive her acting immediately upon the main architectural
+current, while, if we consider her from the conjugal point of view, her
+influence will show itself only in the flow of the tributary stream
+which is conveniently described as decoration. It is a regrettable
+fact that the decorative arts in England had, until they suddenly came
+within this influence, shown not the smallest sign of vitality since
+Soane and Nash translated the Attic enthusiasm of Shelley, Landor and
+Winckelmann into stone and stucco. Learned though he may have been,
+there can be no doubt that John Soane was as genuinely moved by the
+masterpieces of Greek decoration as Shelley by the large and authentic
+voices of Plato and Æschylus. The modern decorator, however, who
+ransacks the storehouse of history from Robert Adam to the caves of
+prehistoric man, is never animated by better instincts than those
+of the merchant adventurer, and often enough by worse. Of a creative
+impulse he is completely innocent. And what are we to say of the
+teaching of Ruskin, who followed upon the heels of these great men,
+except that it was calculated to impart a knowledge not so much of
+decoration as of botany, while its temper was wholly inimical to such
+pleasure as might yet be taken here and there in decorative skill?
+Stifled by the tedious pullulation of Ruskin’s “natural forms,” this
+pleasure appears to be awakening once more, and it is to modern woman
+that we must look for the cause of this awakening.
+
+A convenient way of picturing the change of outlook that has led to
+this revival is to compare two familiar works of nineteenth-century
+fiction separated by a generation or two. Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de
+Maupin_ contains long passages redolent of that nature-worship which
+made Wordsworth a best-seller and which inspired our Ruskin to discard
+the principles of decorative design in favour of those derived from
+the study of plant growth. Innumerable landscapes are presented to us
+in this book, many of them bathed in moonlight of the most impeccable
+romantic quality. Country mansions, pleasure-pavilions, creeper-clad
+cottages, all these are concealed beneath a dense mass of verdure,
+their existence briefly hinted at, while the sinuous paths by which
+they may be approached are made the subject of the closest description,
+together with the trees, shrubs, creepers, herbs and mosses which
+form their setting. Such power of attention as remains in the reader
+is skilfully directed upon the subject of feminine apparel, to the
+treatment of which the author brings a sympathy and animation almost
+equal to those with which he approaches the vegetable kingdom. But the
+apartments through which his characters move, the walls and furniture
+against which their forms, so exquisitely clad, stand disclosed to the
+reader, receive as little thought as the exterior of the buildings,
+so that it is impossible for us to say what they are like. As soon as
+the men and women cross the threshold of a house, an impenetrable mist
+descends upon their surroundings. Alas, there was no one to take any
+interest in even the most delightful of the houses or rooms, and we are
+left to reconstruct them for ourselves, aided only by our knowledge of
+a few authentic remains.
+
+In Zola’s Nana we have a complete antithesis to this fatigue, this
+chlorosis of the decorative faculty. The adornment of her immediate
+setting has with this famous character become a consuming passion. Her
+intuitive artistic knowledge, her manifold inventiveness, never cease
+to astonish the architects and decorators who work at her bidding. Nor,
+in her brief but triumphant career through the world of vice, does she
+once tire of devising fresh schemes of decoration, schemes which Zola
+himself appears to regard with an enthusiasm approaching that of his
+heroine. As she pauses at last on the brink of financial ruin, this
+passion for decoration flares up with an almost hysterical intensity.
+It is then that she dreams of “un prodige, un éblouissement ... un lit
+comme il n’en existait pas, un trône, un autel ... en or et en argent
+repoussés, pareil à un grand bijou.” To the end her preoccupation
+maintains its firm hold upon her, for through it alone it was that she
+could gain her mysterious ascendancy over the minds and the senses of
+men. “Jamais elle n’avait senti si profondément la force de son sexe,”
+remarks Zola as he shows her to us happily contemplating the scenes of
+prodigious elegance that she had established around her. Such is the
+change of attitude which nineteenth-century society must somehow have
+witnessed before it could be so brilliantly recorded in writing. It is
+a similar change that has infused new life into modern decoration.
+
+The question may present itself whether to connect this movement
+with Zola’s unfortunate heroine is not to detract from its merit or
+importance. That must remain entirely a matter for individual judgment.
+I will here but remark that, in borrowing their light from the
+constellation of unhappy spirits in which Nana shone so vividly, the
+decorative arts are only imitating the example set throughout Europe
+and America by the art of feminine dress, and that whatever is said
+of one of these arts applies to the other also. But this superficial
+resemblance is not the only thing that unites decoration with dress,
+for the modern movement in decoration cannot be better described than
+as an enlargement of the old and more immediate business of personal
+adornment. Both currents spring from a common source, and if the
+younger of them will always remain in some respects apart from its
+sartorial companion, grown with the centuries into a venerable historic
+stream, we yet have reason to be thankful that the arid waste of
+decoration is being watered again, however fitfully.
+
+What is it that has turned the decorator of to-day into a kind of
+transcendent costumier? I here have room to hint at a couple of
+reasons only. In the first place, it should be remembered that while
+the avowed ideal of masculine clothing is to render its wearers
+inconspicuous by causing them all to look alike, the ideal of feminine
+clothing is to give an appearance of strangeness and singularity. Now,
+nothing could accord more happily with our mechanical civilization than
+the masculine ideal; nothing, on the other hand, could come into more
+violent and more disappointing conflict with it than the feminine.
+Modern industry does not discriminate; it holds out to both sexes
+the same opportunities for acquisition, it heaps upon both the same
+monotonous profusion of manufactured goods. A hat, a mantle, a gown,
+is no sooner devised than a million others of the selfsame pattern
+pour in steady streams into every corner of the world. A startling
+colour cannot be affected by someone eager to achieve distinction of
+appearance without multiplying more rapidly than the budding green
+in Mr. Wells’ _Time Machine_. Provincial visitors to the West End of
+London are astonished at the number of well-dressed women they see
+about the streets, and profess themselves unable to distinguish between
+a duchess and a shop-assistant, while Londoners who tread for the
+first time the pavements of Paris or New York find themselves similarly
+baffled. Thanks to the ceaseless activities of the large drapers’
+store (supported by the admirable enterprise of artificial silk
+manufacturers) no woman to-day, however penurious, need deny herself
+any of those elegant accessories that were the crowning luxury of her
+ancestors. But, pleasing as this facility may be to the multitude, is
+it to be imagined that the more fortunate or ambitious can look upon it
+with the same satisfaction? Assuredly not, for they have even invoked
+the law of copyright in their attempt to resist it.
+
+In drawing our conclusions from this spectacle of unwelcome equality
+it is useful also to bear in mind the relation between the female and
+the male populations of Western Europe. During the last half century
+the excess of women in this country has, roughly speaking, doubled
+in proportion to the total number of inhabitants of both sexes. The
+effect of a fixed and constant inequality may be neutralized by a
+series of adjustments in the social structure, but when the inequality
+threatens to increase fourfold in the course of a century the pressure
+it engenders is not so easily relieved. One of the most distressing
+sights to be met with in Paris to-day is the large number of coloured
+and mostly negroid males that is gradually being assimilated by the
+white population. There are some even who predict that France will soon
+have become a bi-coloured republic. Should this unpleasant prophecy
+be realized, the present excess of white females will no doubt go a
+long way to account for the change. Whether or not this excess has
+done anything to stimulate the new movement in decoration it is, of
+course, impossible to say with certainty, but our surmise receives
+the strongest confirmation from the fact that in the United States
+of America, alone among modern countries in this respect, the modern
+decorative movement appears to be awakening no response at all. For in
+that country alone the male population exceeds the female by a surplus
+that is increasing at almost exactly the same rate as our own female
+surplus is increasing.
+
+The new movement has been described as an enlargement of the art of
+dress, an affinity which those who visited the 1925 Paris Exhibition
+of Decorative Art will be ready enough to acknowledge. Among the
+most skilful of the exponents of the movement is M. Maurice Dufrène,
+and no one could wish for a more complete expression of its main
+characteristics than his _Chambre de Dame_, shown at the 1925
+exhibition along with other apartments by the same artist. Wherever
+one may turn in this room, one’s eye rests upon long sinuous curves
+whose rise and fall is as the billowing of an exquisite garment. The
+richness and amplitude of its lines recall nothing so much as the
+famous liquefaction that the silk frock of Herrick’s Julia would
+undergo, more particularly while the poet watched her in the act of
+walking. The dressing-table undulates round its absent mistress with
+a softness of movement that causes one to think of a fur or a cloak,
+while in the distance, framed in a background of streaming silver,
+the bed rolls lazily like a magic carpet suspended on the breeze. The
+cushions and lampshades have the appearance of intimate garments too
+pertly displayed. From an elongated hollow in the ceiling, fringed
+with curling foam, a golden light descends with studied moderation
+upon the skin of a giant polar bear, the canine adjunct enlarged and
+architecturalized, its muzzle caught in the loops of a heavy rope
+of silver. Everybody said the room was a distinguished success, and
+this, in so far as it served to enhance a brilliant though imaginary
+personality, it indubitably was.
+
+The chief manifestation of the new movement, however, lies not so much
+in its forms as in the teguments wherein those forms are clothed. They
+are invariably of the greatest succulence. Soft, smooth, evenly or
+sharply luminous, they answer one another like the modulated textures
+of the dressmaker’s products. Even metallic surfaces are made to play
+their dull or glittering part in the combination, for there is nothing,
+as Baudelaire wrote in one of his poems, that provides so telling a
+foil to the warmth of woven materials as “l’énivrante monotonie du
+métal, du marbre et de l’eau.” It is only fit, therefore, that among
+the most successful of all these designers should be the metalworker
+Edgar Brandt, whose fame has securely established itself even on the
+other shore of the Atlantic. To infuse with profound feminine charm
+the design of a metal grille or an ornamental chandelier may appear
+difficult, but this is what M. Edgar Brandt has succeeded in doing;
+nor could we ask for a more striking testimony to the strength and
+singleness of the impulse from which this modern movement in decoration
+derives than we may find in his triumphant enlistment of such unlikely
+aids as these. The proper place and function of his work, of which
+I will not attempt a detailed description, is as unmistakable as the
+work itself. Only the other day a candidate for an academic prize in
+architecture introduced an imitation of it into a design for a bank
+building. Of course, he had to be rebuked on behalf of the prize
+committee, happily through the person of that witty and scholarly
+critic, Mr. H. S. Goodhart-Rendel. The particular manner of design
+he had chosen, the designer was told, should be confined to “the
+surroundings of beautiful and expensive women.” Its nature could not
+have been more succinctly defined.
+
+Such, then, are, to the best of my belief, the most important forces
+at work in architecture to-day. Without doubt these forces will drive
+the architecture of to-morrow into a mould that is much like the one
+I have here attempted to describe. Are any new currents likely to
+manifest themselves, adding their influence to that of the currents
+with which we are already familiar? Few men living to-day are so bold
+that they would care to prophesy without some visible omen to justify
+their words. Our ideas about progress and the future have themselves
+shrunk somewhat; they have become more modest than they were. To the
+nineteenth-century European, whose faith was so miraculously fortified
+by the discovery of natural selection, these things had grown to be the
+first and greatest realities of human existence. Progress was to him a
+pleasing and uninterrupted enlargement of his worldly self, a direct
+and positive increase of comfort, power, and general importance. As for
+the future, the element of variability, of possible differentiation,
+that was contained in it seemed about as great as the growth of a
+crystal might show in a constantly replenished solution. Even to-day
+there are some men living who (like that most eloquent of worshippers
+at the favourite Victorian shrine, Mr. H. G. Wells) still look forward
+to a continued expansion of the social organism, an unbroken if less
+unvarying accession of prosperity and power. But it is becoming only
+too clear that the band of orthodox believers is rapidly dwindling;
+already in some places the object of their worship is openly blasphemed
+against. We are told that the growth of an industrial society must
+necessarily be limited in extent――nay, that it must even be of limited
+duration. It is argued with depressing force that the opening-up of
+markets is like everything else in this world, and can only continue
+so long as there are markets to open up. Every day the future of our
+urbanized civilization appears wrapped in a darker cloud. Every day
+it becomes more uncertain how long Balbus will continue to build even
+in fulfilment of needs that exist here and now. The modern amorphous
+building, the “zoning” of volume and outline, the labour-saving
+residence, the subservience of the new decoration to feminine dress:
+all these spring from forces that exist to-day and that must continue
+for some time longer provided civilization is able to maintain itself
+in its present form. More than this it is impossible to foretell,
+except one thing only, with an inadequate reference to which I must
+bring this essay to an end.
+
+It has been observed how the growth of population of our towns is
+even now being followed by the architectural expansion which is the
+somewhat retarded concomitant of such a growth. This growth, however,
+is slowing down and, it may be, gradually subsiding. We continue to
+build, but the tenants of the buildings we put up will before long
+have ceased to multiply. We have rediscovered the first principles of
+the forgotten art of town-planning, but only at a time when our towns
+are becoming almost adequate to the needs of their populations. One
+of the most momentous chapters in the history of humanity is thus
+about to be closed, and it is surely permissible at such a moment to
+speculate awhile on what will succeed it. What is to follow the great
+age of city-building, whose ironic fate it was to discern the laws
+that should have governed its activities when it was too late to obey
+these laws except on a point of secondary importance, being then able
+to obey only under penalty of death? Are we to meet, after failing
+to grasp the illusive opportunities of town-planning, with new, and
+real, and unexhausted opportunities of country-planning? I have not
+in this essay attempted a detailed description of the growth of our
+towns, which is a thing of the present and the past, but have confined
+myself to certain things that must happen within the boundaries of
+these towns before many more years have elapsed. And though it is
+too early as yet to speak with any particularity of the repopulation
+of the countryside, it is clear that no discussion of the future can
+claim to be even approximately just if it does not bear witness to this
+new phase in the history of building. Following unobtrusively upon
+a lengthy procession of works on town-planning, the first treatise
+on country-planning has recently made its appearance. Though only a
+pamphlet of modest dimensions, it is fairly certain that the outward
+growth it heralds will not be less important than the centripetal one
+which is even now being arrested, for the exodus from the city has
+hardly begun to-day, and the architecture of the countryside still
+requires to pass beyond the experimental stage and assume some measure
+of permanence. But when rural England has grown thus far, we may rest
+assured that its permanence and stability will exceed all that the city
+at any time possessed, and in this manner will come to pass what was
+prophesied to the Roman philosopher Ædesius who, it will be recalled,
+awoke one morning and saw that the back of his left hand was covered
+with writing. “After reverently saluting his hand and the letters,” so
+the story goes, “he found that the following oracle was written on his
+hand: ‘On the warp of the two Fates’ spinning lie the threads of thy
+life’s web. If thy choice is the cities and towns of men, thy renown
+shall be deathless, shepherding the god-given impulse of youth. But
+if thou shalt be the shepherd of sheep and bulls, then hope that thou
+thyself shalt be the associate of the blessed immortals.’” Thus speaks
+the divine portent of the future of architecture also, and to whom
+except the architect skilled in country-planning, the architect of
+to-morrow, could it be said (as it was said of Ædesius and his pupils)
+that “when they spread their wings further than those of Icarus, though
+they were even more fragile, he would lead them gently down, not into
+the sea, but to the land and to human life”?
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+ ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+ ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
+
+ ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
+
+ ――The Publisher’s Catalog for the _To-day and To-morrow_ series,
+   referred to in the front matter above, was not contained in the
+   source material.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75202 ***