Architectural History and the Student Architect: A Symposium

Author(s): Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, David F. Anstis, Walter L. Creese, Leonard K. Eaton,

Anthony Jackson, Spiro Kostof, Frederick D. Nichols, Eduard F. Sekler and Marcus
Whiffen
Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians , Oct., 1967, Vol. 26, No. 3
(Oct., 1967), pp. 178-199
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/988365

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Society of Architectural Historians and University of California Press are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Architectural History and the Student Architect

A SYMPOSIUM

"Surely, if architectural history did not

exist, we would be compelled to invent it."*

IT IS NOW a quarter of a century since a special issue of this Journal was dev
architectural education. Since then (as a result mainly of the vigorous growt
were then tentative and controversial are now unchallenged. At the same tim
within the SAH itself, combined with radical changes in architectural practic
suggest that a reassessment of this problem is opportune. Indeed, there can be no be
a comparison between the views expressed by the present contributors and tho
summary of a survey written by the late C. L. V. Meeks, which he entitled: "Th
in the Professional School-his Training and Technique."

SIBYL MOHOLY-NAGY

Pratt Institute

AN INQUIRY into a methodology of should teaching

get himself thearchitec-
advance flyer of Perspecta 11 from the
tural history to students of architecture boils down Yale.
architectural school at to Itthree
contains as a come-on for
future
decisive points: why to teach a discipline buyers twelve
which quotations selected by the student
is generally
rejected by practitioners; whom to select for
editor to such
express the creedan un-
of "the new architecture of to-
popular task; and how to implement morrow."
the ordeal of
The staggering andfour
pedagogically highly rele-
credit units of glazed eyes, chronic absenteeism, and
vant discovery is the inter-
total cultural amnesia of the "post-
faculty condescension. Without any historical"
illusions about
generation. The Yale the
Manifesto, matched by
similar issues from
idiosyncratic bias involved, it seems necessary Austin to even
to start Seattle, is a rehash of the
the most concise answers to these three questions
functionalist with
Gotterdimmerung a I92os and I930s. Like
of the
supersonic survey of the current architectural scene.
weak thunderclaps after The the shocking dem-
fierce lightning,
reason why this must be endured is its olition
relevance toas question
of architecture monumentality and individuality,
2: who can or should teach architectural history
and of to
the architect as future
autonomous creator, is matched by
architects?
contemporary clich6s. Gropius' blast at
A study of student publications is mandatory. Not of the
the egocentric prima donna architect who forces his personal fancy
glossy trade journals whose irrelevance is staggering, but
on an intimidated client, creating solitary monuments ofindividual
of those shakily financed but unquenchable Perspectas, Im- significance
ages, Raleighs, etc. The latest issues look like loyalty oaths to
post-architectural collectivism accompanied by fierce dec- is matched by Theobald's
larations against historical continuity either as social or as I think the search for a unique architecture is very unlikely to be
individual architectural expression. Anyone doubting this successful

and McHale's
*Turpin C. Bannister, "The Contribution of Architectural His-
tory to the Development of the Modern Student-Architect," SAHJ, Ownership of the individual unit is no more than a carefully
II, ii (April 1942) p. 5. fostered mystique.

178

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 179

The Osthaus proclamation from the Werkbund Tagung in Forum, October 1966) on "Technology and City Matrix"
Cologne in 1914 aimed at the city as:

Our art has to move forward as social significance... a metabolic system organized by High Technology [with] totally
integrated enclosure, transportation and communication sub-sys-
fathered the CIAM Declaration of La Sarraz in 1928: tems . . . plug-in, infra and metabolic cities taking their rightful
place among the hardware of the world... Established boundaries
will be removed and we will come closer to the all-at-once world
An impediment for the development of building in a rational
of Marshall McLuhan.
economically sound direction are government commissions de-
manding esthetic formal designs WHICH MUST BE MOST
EMPHATICALLY EXTERMINATED An almost unbearable temptation to include an analysis
of him, our Mechanical Bridegroom, in this brief survey
and the key sentence of the Charter of Athensoffrom 1933:
the current scene confronting architectural students, must
be resisted. It should be clear by now that a stupendous
The course to be taken by all town-planning projects will be in-
ability to make incongruous comparisons is trying fran-
fluenced by political social and economic factors and not by the
spirit of modem architecture.
tically to align architecture with science. Beside the Com-
puter Boys and Systems Engineers, the most honored
speakers
These gestures of a heroic suicide by one of the at recent ACSA and AIA conferences have been
world's
Boeing
oldest professions, now repeated in 1967, are still and Rand
trying to technicians, adding to the smarting in-
push architecture over the brink: feriority complex of the architect the guilty realization that
buildings cannot fly.
The order of Community is becoming a more important
What can issue
history mean in this atmosphere of scientific
than the integrity of any one building
romanticism that is too illiterate, and too happy, to have
found shelter from individual incompetence even to heed
proclaims Millard (co-designer of the most ostentatious
the caveats of its new masters?
fire house since the Golden House of Nero) seconded by
Shadrack Woods' In I960 Niels Bohr characterized science as

limited to regularities of unsurpassed exactness and objectivity of

We are more interested in making a world where buildings tend
description which can only be achieved by including in the ac-
to lose their special visual significance REPRESENTING WHAT?
count of the phenomenon explicit references to purely experi-
[caps. in the original] and men are free to participate at all levels.
mental (ideal) conditions.

The key to the current climate in schools of architecture and Vannevar Bush has cautioned:
and the potential of the instructor in architectural history
It is earlier than we think! . . Science proves nothing absolutely.
lies in Mr. Woods' rhetorical question and in his call for
On the most vital questions, it does not even produce evidence.
"participation on all levels." Constantine Doxiades, who
transferred the sacred flame of the CIAM Charter from Against this wilful misunderstanding of the scientific basis
Athens to the Holy Isle of Delos, makes it clear that "all of man-made environment, promoted today by our archi-
levels" means "no level" when he defines the sole remaining tectural schools andjournals, the historian has to reinterpret
responsibility of the architect as "a physical solution to the two basic architectural factors. Their semantic identification
problem of the human habitat" on the lowest economic with physical science problems in the title of Giedion's
denominator available to the largest number of people popular Space Time and Architecture started the whole de-
(Architecture in Transition, 1963). On the way to this con- structive confusion. Time AND Space must be reintroduced
clusion he asserts that all monumentality in architecture into environmental design as the key factors of human iden-
developed by "accretion" from the lowliest shelter designs. tification through an understanding of their concretization
In its aftermath (Renewal Magazine, September 1966) he in completed architecture. The inherent problem is enor-
combines a population projection often billion urban dwel- mous and very, very old. Some 2500 years ago, the Buddha
lers within the next hundred years with "an optimum from refused to answer only two questions: whether the universe
forty to eighty persons per acre" and "one family houses was infinite or bounded, and whether it was eternal or
with their own plot or courtyard." finite-which goes to show that Vannevar Bush's conten-
Buckminster Fuller has ecstatically acclaimed "the space tion that science does not produce evidence in vital ques-
capsule as the first perfect man-made environment" and tions takes all progress out of the Big-bang, the Steady
television as the beneficial "third parent of American State, and the Continuous Creation theories.
youth." A university symposium (reported in Architectural It was architecture, not science, that produced the evi-

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 i8o

dence of a man-made microcosm, infinite within the infin-

as are merchant, artist, judge, and physician. The citizens
ity of the mind. Man's helpless rage against the transienceofofa town know without instruction that local time-expres-
sion has no meaning without the larger background of his-
his existence produced art and buildings as a time-binding
torical time. Human proportion is only comforting in
quotient. The history of architecture proves how much of
man's best ambitions are contained in the totality of man-
willed contrast to superhuman collective scale. The artful
kind. Each architectural form, being the edge of a man-
genius of forms and spaces enhances the inexorable genius
made space, is the stereometric and orthogonal presentationof science and technology by taking the mantle of beauty
of duration and succession. Time endures in form, in the from the shoulders of the artist and spreading it under the
feet of the multitude.
identification of shapes that give a message of the continuity
of life beyond individual lifetime. Space is position and ex-This is what the architectural historian has to teach. It has
pansion in an amorphous universe in which the creative
nothing to do with styles and all the contorted subtleties
potential of the human mind is lost without the spatial or-
of the art-historical specialist defending his grubstake by not
der. In the youth of civilization all designed forms and
connecting with other grubstakes lest he be deprived of his
claim to expertise. This, in answering the question as to
spaces were monumental because the term implies not big-
ness and ostentation but means "to remember" the man-who should teach history to architects, excludes the art-
datory memory of lives lived. historical product of our Fine Arts Institutes. Repeated ex-
It would be rather easy and enormously gratifying if the
perience has shown that they are like juvenile alcoholics, in
task of the architectural historian were confined to this First
that no matter how sincere their intentions may be of dry-
Cause. The difficulty starts with a realization that some
ing themselves out, they will return to the euphoria of
three thousand years after the architect had been invested
Burckhardt, Wolfflin, Panofsky, and Greene at the first
with the keeping of the Universal Time-quotient, he wassniff of a familiar historical interior that once furnished the
put in charge of Local Time that had appeared on the clock-
walls to hang the analytical treatises of their teachers, and
face of history. Perhaps it was in Babylon, when the mer-
uncounted term and examination papers. The only type of
chants demanded and got their own place in the New City person fit to teach architectural history to architects is either
that lifted the ostracism of the extra-mural Karourn; or an
it architect of unusual perception and education, or an archi-
was in Rome, when Cestius, the baker, could buy himself tectural
a critic capable of projecting the buildings he ana-
mini-pyramid as a tomb, and when arenas had to be cal- lyzes into the double dimension of actuality and duration
culated as to the number of toilet seats needed in the base-
of time. Both are hard to come by. Of all the professions (as
ment. The first columns had supported nothing but their
distinct from trades), architecture is most probably the least
symbolism. Now the architect had to find a balance be-
intellectual and the most illiterate. There are exceptions,
tween live loads and composition. The triumphal axis of the
and it would be one of the tasks of a history teacher to point
Hellenistic city was subjected to traffic densities and retail
out that since the spread of mass communication, the archi-
returns, and cities grew into the sky, no longer to touch the
tect with the greatest verbal capacity has been the historical
clouds "and make ourselves a name," as the Old Testament survivor. The architectural critic as teacher will be on the
had discovered, but because the speculator had fallen underother end of the spectrum. If he is historically aware, he will
hardly have a daily column or be a popular editor. He
the curse of the Great Spirit of the Blackfoot Indians decree-
ing that should be looked for in the "second rate" architectural
the white man is condemned to buy and sell the land on which he journals, the ones that can pay little but respect much, and
lives.
which are too grateful for intelligent contributions to per-
This part of architectural history too is ancient by now- mit themselves the vandalism committed on original writ-
some two thousand years of struggle between inspiration ing by "first rate" editors.
and implementation, between the time-quotient of history The framework into which the third answer (concerning
and the time-response of actuality. Anthemius hollowed content and personality) should fit is, of course, dependent
out the virtual orbit of the universe till it collapsed. Who- on individuality, size, budget, student niveau. From a per-
ever dared Beauvais thinned the column shafts till they were sonal viewpoint of twenty years of experience, there emerge
mere tracer lines into the highest human ambitions. Louis three specific approaches as rather successful. The first is
XIV desiccated a province and started the French Revolution methodology. Anything dealing-as architecture does-
by building Versailles. The tolerance shown by mankind to with questions of taste, comfort, and sentiment is liable to
architectural failure would be incomprehensible if it did not bog down in highly personal judgments and the irrelevant
spring from a profound instinctual knowledge that the ramblings known from museum tours the world over. My
architect is as essential an interpreter of the human condition methodological framework has been constructed from:

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 i8i

Environment: a strong link, there will be no lasting depth of historical

The question of orientation in natural space and social vision. It is an embittering tragedy that the American craze
context.
of making out of "higher education" a social service, offer-
Form: ing "something for everybody," serves as an excuse for
The identification by sense impression with verticality,
some of our oldest architectural schools to pack in students
modulation, proportion, and scale. like dirty wash who come out of the machine the way they
Space: went in.

The where and why of human participation; by far the
most difficult and the most rewarding of historical ex-
plorations, and especially close to the young generation
conscious of finite, infinite, static, and dynamic spaces
and their articulation by light, color, texture, motion.
Structure:
The system-making of architecture that mediates be-
tween form and space and its anonymous, supporting, or
form-giving role.
The second approach is the verbal presentation, lectures
and seminars. A teacher cannot be a lousy speaker, an ill-
prepared scholar, and an unenthusiastic routinier and keep
the attendance of his students, let alone lead them back over
the historical credibility gap into the continuity of designed
environment. Lectures have to be prepared and slides must
be made on and on and on to furnish not only the latest
archaeological evidence and the best contemporary design,
but to follow incessantly the trajectory curve through time
that links the oldest to the newest, the most distant to the
most evident. The verticality of a ziggurat is as contem-
porary as the Chase Manhattan Bank, and the thin shells of
Tivoli as daring and unsolved as Utzon's Opera House. The
essential function of the lecturer is to prepare the seminar,
because without spinning this tenuous thread of contact into
There remains the third approach to teaching history to
architects: the assignment. It should be visual, visual, and
again visual. It is perfectly justifiable to train future Fine
Arts professors on a comparative analysis of the Vitruvian
and the Palladian modular systems, to emulate Norberg-
Schultz and Robin Boyd with a rehash of even the most
abstruse architectural theories that float like ghosts around
actual buildings which they have never entered, or to com-
pare the style characteristics of Greek Revival and Neo-
Gothic. The essence of architectural presentation is visual-
ness (the German word Sinnfalligkeit cannot be matched)
and consciousness. The architect's world is three- and four-
dimensional to which the second dimension of the drawing
is a bridge. The assignment hierarchy should therefore
move from drawing to model and, hopefully, to motion
picture. Because, as Le Corbusier said:
Architecture is the foot that walks, the head that turns, the eye
that sees
from Karnak to Ronchamps.
At the bottom of it all must rest the dedicated conviction
that architecture is an a priori right and obligation of man-
kind, and that it is the trust of the architectural historian to
prove that there is no past in man's concern for the environ-
ment of man.

DAVID F. ANSTIS

Plymouth School of Architecture

"HISTORY IS BUNK" said the pragmatic Henry

particular, at Ford
the history of architecture then w
and a million history-haters gratefully passed
that on
is his maxim almost shamefacedly tau
sometimes
to posterity. Whose history or what history Ford
quently did not
perfunctorily studied. Indeed, the wel
teur
bother to explain;* but a blanket statement of this
like architecture
was can sometimes suffer a tra
sufficient to harden an already apparentlywhen
natural
he resistance
discovers that the professional archit
to a seemingly unnecessary subject. When
know we look,
little in background to his own disc
of the

* [Editor's Note: In fairness to Henry Ford, it should perhaps be

emphasized that this remark was apparently made at the time ofHistory.
Constitutional the It was during this trial, in r
action for libel brought by Ford against the Chicago
paper Tribune,
reporter'swhich
question as to what he thought of hist
had asserted that he was an "ignorant idealist" was
in opposing
quoted in the
thein-
New York Times of 20 May I919 a
vasion of Mexico by a punitive expeditionary force under General
the following statement: "History is more or less the b
Pershing. During the fourteen weeks' trial (in to
which
live the Tribune's
in the present, and the only history that is w
eight lawyers pleaded "justification"), Henry Ford
damwas persistently
is the history we make today" (Keith Sward,
examined by the defendants to prove his ignorance
Henry of American
Ford (New York, I948), p. IIo).]

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
general ignorance is not true of all architects, of course;
some are educated at schools which not only make history a
meaningful part of their studies but may also continue his-
tory throughout every year in the course. By and large,
however, by the time the qualified architect has been a year
or so in practice he has forgotten nine tenths of whatever
history he managed to cram into his head to overcome some
dim and distant examinational hurdle.
No doubt many would applaud this and from a strength
derived from bitter boring memories of historical styles and
comparative details, would hasten the early demise of his-
tory. But strangely enough, the history of architecture, as a
study within the professional education, has so far refused to
die completely. Whether it has been retained in recent years
because its factual content might prove useful, or because
there is an instinctive and partially intuitive realization that
there must be something valuable about history study is not
easy to find. What does appear certain is that as a study in its
own right it has frequently received the wrong sort of at-
tention. Because it has been, in the past, such a dull memory-
testing date-deliberating exercise, the reaction has been to
modernize the subject, to sweeten it, to add a little glamour,
to pretend that it's all very simple and that the student needs
merely a broad appreciation of history. Indeed: why call it
history? Appreciation gently guides you around the great
soul-searching problems of historical thought.
No doubt one of the initial obstacles in awaking the
student's interest is that no one bothers overmuch to explain
what history is all about; and compared with all the other
exciting studies in the course it cannot, apparently, be put to
any practical use. So-and in common with most other
people-the student continues to believe that history is only
a record of what happened in the past; at his secondary school
it was battles, monarchs, and presidents: now it becomes old
buildings and dim figures with curious names like Imhotep
or Inigo, and whether Hellenic comes before or after Hel-
ladic. Perhaps that general outlook could be accepted if the
student's comprehension of modern architecture were in
some depth, but tragically this is not always so. Beyond the
almost obligatory digestion of a few standard works like
Pioneers of Modern Design he is often an architectural Alice
lost in a modern wonderland. Having trudged remorse-
lessly up a ladder of chronologically concise styles to the
Renaissance, he too frequently arrives in a welter of modern
complexity that he has not been educated to deal with. Per-
haps it is not so surprising that much of modern design has
in fact descended into a plastic copyism made pleasantly
possible by the versatility of materials like concrete. What
is surprising is that contemporary historians should be taken
aback at the sentimental return to the good old de Stijl and
the gay twenties.
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Since the time the profession of architecture, as such,
transformed itself from eighteenth-century Palladian ama-
teurism into the nineteenth-century practising fraternity,
history has formed a deep foundation to the education and
subsequent attitudes of the architect. Historical architecture
was design; even prior to World War i, Registration Boards
insisted on the student carrying out his Final design in
Gothic or Classic (to choice), a hoary remnant of the re-
vivalistic wars. But the whole literature of the modern
movement, and in particular that of the Continent, sought
to institute a new architecture by turning the architect
against Styles and therefore against history as well. As a
natural result, history became discredited either as a quarry
of experience or as a basis for design theory. Today, of
course, the idea of tuition on the Theory of Design is natu-
rally looked at askance as being no more than a medium of
historical regurgitation; the sort of regurgitation that oc-
curred in the I95os in pursuit of Alberti's proportional
theories, or in the Beaux Arts Imperial Rome version ex-
emplified by Howard Robertson.
But perhaps the main cause of the unpopularity of history
study lay in the fact that it was seen as a finite once-and-
for-all-between-two-hard-covers study with a rigid and
over-familiar framework. In fact, in rejecting history, ar-
chitects were merely rejecting an idea of it: afundamentalist
idea which is primarily the Antiquarian version of history.
Antiquarian history is overtly collective: it collects data and
adds them into a format. It believes in peaks, transitions,
and exact dates. It can give three alternative names for a
thirteenth-century window and it insists you know them
too. It lays down a limited definition of beauty which, as in
the case of the Parthenon, you may interpret as a check list
of beautiful factors, beautiful intentions, and beautiful
thoughts. It believes overmuch in cycles offashion or swings
of the pendulum, that age must give clarity to judgment and
that contemporary merit cannot seriously be perceived. It
is chary of looking at anything nearer than fifty years away
and even a decade may become "instant history." By its
nature, Antiquarianism demands you recognize the same
pedestals and worship the same idols.
At its best, Antiquarianism gives pleasure and insight to
numerous interested and sympathetic lay amateurs of archi-
tecture; it provides the essential data and criteria to archi-
tects engaged in restoration; and in part it can be a working
basis from which First Year students can proceed to ma-
turer studies. At its worst, it gives a false bias to the reality
of architecture by presenting it as a chronologically unroll-
ing visual pattern having a set life of primitive, classic, and
decay, and of course it presents a hard rallying point for
misguided preservationists to whom antiquity is synony-
mous with value.
 183

It may be argued that the works on modern history are with form and structure is pummelled into justifying some
not Antiquarian; that they are in fact anti-style because of the first attempts at corner glazing or asymmetrical
modern architecture is anti-style. This is partially true; planning.
nevertheless the overall traditional interpretive ideas still re- Even to this day, the idea that there are two classes of
main: the erection of personality cults (why should Le Cor- structure, building and architecture, continues to hold sway
busier's reputation necessarily suffer a decline unless he has amongst those who should know better. At what point
been wilfully misrepresented in the past?); the insistence building receives the magic touch that turns it into archi-
that the values inherent in past architecture are of equal im- tecture appears to need authoritative historical hindsight.
portance in present-day building; and more important still, As a concept, it is very dangerous, confirming even further
the critical assessments dominated by aesthetic subjective the designer's hunch that the one-off monument wrapped
judgments, superficially by technological judgments and around any convenient commission is the thing to go for.
only rarely motivated by considerations of human happi- Cries of protest that X school or Y historian is not a party
ness.
to Antiquarianism and that their course or their work is a
What history, or architectural history in particular, is to treat architectural history more roundly
determined effort
about could only be dealt with over a long period so that
and freely can no doubt be accepted. But where is there an
each step of the dialogue is marked by a fullenclave
person-to-
of architects who, acting as a catalyst on each other,
person understanding (or historical semantics, if
areyou like);historical interpretation and indicating new
rethinking
and
but perhaps it is significant that whereas the field ofpromising
generalpaths of enquiry? Where are the books on
modern
history is replete with authoritative works on the architecture
theory of that are not rehashes of a familiar
theme,The
history there is little in the world of architecture. or that
im- are not new studies of some iota of such
portance of this lies in the fact that a working themes as Art Nouveau? Where are those searchers after
historical
attitude to architecture is essential if a "moderntruth
movement"
who are assessing by performance standards those
is to continue creatively rather than feed upon itself as
traditional it
milestones in twentieth-century development,
frequently shows signs of wishing to do. and casting into limbo those which have only the sole
merit of transitory
History involves interpretation; without intelligent in- aesthetic form? And how are we to
terpretation architects are in no better a position
knowthan areof a variety of attractive directions to step
in which
animals who cannot hand down and add to accumulated
unless we have some rationale of judgment and values de-
experience. But an interpretive idea for one rived
time notisonly
notfrom contemporary research (such as in
necessarily valid for another, and the encyclopaedic listings
sociology and psychology) but also from real experience-
of Rickman and Gwilt and their contemporaries' deter-
or history?
mination to see architecture as one long crusade As
offarevolu-
as architecture is concerned, history is the reversal
tionary progress should not be put to studentsofas being
design: a design is synthesis, history is analysis;
where
working historical attitude for today. where design is prospective, history is retrospective and the
That modern architecture does suffer from historians
one cannot do without the other. The fact that we have
conscientiously trying to present a concise framework of
tried is self-delusive: we have been like a man who, on per-
evolution, is now being realized. That their ceiving
labors were
that his horse and buggy were out of date, had sold
essential and invaluable to the building up of a fair
it butworking
failed to buy an automobile instead. What is perhaps
picture of what modem architecture might be about cannot
promising is that the field of town-planning history has
be doubted. That they went too far by damning by omis-
suffered far less from this rigidity of approach and evalua-
sion some of the awkward hundred and one unsung archi-
tion, so that a favorable climate fostering wide discussion
has developed.
tectural heroes of this century is becoming more than a This free discussion has had considerable
suspicion. In fact, modern historical philosophyeffect
has not
perpet-
only on our ability to redirect ideas and aims as,
uated the dusty Renaissance-nurtured idea that for
architecture
example, with the Mark II New Towns and the Plug-
should be primarily valued in visual or emotive in
terms, and the Garden City and the Monumental
City as against
if a building of the I9oos should be so unfortunate as also
Mass, but to in raising to eminence such crusading "out-
have the wrong historical trappings it finds itself inadmis-
siders" as Jane Jacobs. Of course, the early preindustrial
sible to the annals of modern architecture even if with
town it does
its defensive preoccupation is a fairly definable
function, does weather, and does work. In its extreme
historical variation of a type; but the postindustrial city is
terms the visio-emotive theory can be carried to what
only mayof partially realized theories, and historical
a collection
analyses
be regarded as extraordinary limits in Space, Time like those of Mumford have had a direct and stimu-
andArchi-
tecture, where a small but interesting concept relating space
lating result.

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
184

To proceed much further in suggesting a useful purpose that it involves intellectual courage, without which history
for history is once again to trap history within the limita- can be only a rigid finite quantity of knowledge resulting
tions of our own day-to-day ambitions. In fact history can- in the deliberate exclusion of contradictory ideas, facts or,
not be directed to any specific end; and if it is allied with the theories. It needs courage in the selection of material and
evolutionary or life-theories of certain art historians, then authorities, and in the subsequent rejection of them later if
the whole active practice of architecture suffers. The reso- need be. And it needs courage in following through one
lution of the problem of exactly how history should be small spark of conviction over a long period against an ap-
studied is made more difficult by the fact that teaching is parently overwhelming mass of contradictory opinion.
personally interpretative, that most available books are Significantly, such courage has been an apparent attribute
overauthoritative and selective, and that the whole under- of outstanding designers, and it is hard to ignore the fact
lying philosophy of the profession is one of acceptance of that some of the acceptedly great creative figures of recent
outside historical interpretation. Certainly it would be a years, like Wright and Le Corbusier, have had more than a
wonderful thing for practising architects to teach history so passing interest in and sense of history.
that the fully fledged young architect in turn becomes as The whole framework of history study must in conse-
proud of his historical discipline as he may be of his struc- quence be a permissive one, allowing the student to proceed
tural dexterity. And there can be no doubt that the practice from a discursive and brief factual record of architectural
of architecture would gain from possessing professionally history to a consideration of the various causative factors in
qualified architects who are also equally competent as critics history (particularly those of sociology, economics, tech-
and commentators. The present situation, which neither nology, and philosophy), eventually to culminate in a
overencourages architects to think other than in idiomatic- broad appreciation of the industrialized world. And then,
cum-graphic jargon, nor regards history as "useful," need as the student progresses and matures, it must proceed to an
not necessarily continue into the future, and the oft repeated investigation in depth of those parts that are of particular
argument that eighteenth-century architecture benefited interest to him, so that the chronological framework is re-
from its host of "enlightened amateurs" conveniently dis- tained merely as one in which he can climb in any direction.
regards the comparative sterility of that century's architec- All this would mean that a formal examination of knowl-
ture when seen in its overall social and technological con- edge becomes impossible and if necessary would be replaced
text.
by an assessment of attitude and interest. It would mean
But there need be no misunderstanding about one thing:
history demanding a larger share of the student's time, in
which he will have to read more and think more. It would
history specialization is not just for restorers (a highly
skilled branch of architectural practice), since the complete
mean more teachers prepared to listen, and able to recog-
history study proceeds from the certainties of antique ormerit in ideas with which they themselves may not
nize
recent fact to the conjectures of theory. The forms, details,
agree. It would mean the role of the teacher becoming that
structure, and material of historical architecture are well
of a guide, frankly admitting that his ignorance in some
catalogued; the great riddle of why most of the great civili-
historical field might be only slightly less than that of his
students.
zations should have spent the larger part of their wealth in
erecting nonutilitarian building is merely one example ofFinally, a a responsible history course might eventually put
familiar historical problem about which inadequate thought
an end to the mildewed but still glamourized fallacy (de-
is given.
rived from the old European sketching-tour) that the only
Perhaps the real basis on which history should be studied
way to study historical architecture is to embark on a color-
is that of the acceptance of the fact that it is a mature and a
slide whistle-stop tour of the great monuments. Unless the
maturing study. This means that it cannot be hurried or
observer has at least a working knowledge of the culture of
compressed into convenient gaps in the syllabus. History
needs to continue throughout the whole process ofeducation: the particular historical era, is aware of the designer's in-
there may be a beginning but certainly there is no end. Nor tentions, and knows something of the economic and finan-
is it an additive study, a sort of total list of occurrences and cial limitations in which he had to work, such visits can be-
remains (or dates and buildings): rather it is cumulative in come no more than architectural LSD; a debatable emo-
the sense that ideas and concepts proceed from, modify, or tional experience to be revived and remolded in another
absorb other ideas and concepts. It is a maturing process in age.

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 WALTER L. CREESE

University of Oregon

THE NEED FOR HISTORY for the training ofThat the intellectual
architects is and obligatory contex
everywhere felt but never easily defined. The
history
subconscious
is examined in our institutions is more
difficulty with the process springs, I think, tract
from than an academic requirement would be th
the convic-
tion that in usage it has to be a reconstruction of tradition.
cumstance to recognize. The second is that if hi
But it is a tradition with a difference. The regarded-as
conditions of
it its
is taught to potential architects
exposition in academic institutions make it
ofinevitable that
systems research, then it will be fruitful. T
there will be many alternatives and choices explored.
past Andbecomes a sound chamber, a ligh
experience
these choices, since they are postulated byfrom
supposedly edu- of which all kinds of tempora
the planes
and reflections
cated individuals, are to be weighed carefully, one against can be developed. The cramp
the other. Its control is thus apt to be centered in the dimensions
and limited cul- of the moment are s
leased to make.
tural gray matter rather than in the marrow, contrary to
previous traditions. Where the historian may go astray in teachin
The forging of a new tradition and whatfessional
history architect
has to is in assuming that history
ended exploitation
contribute tends to become overly self-conscious and par- of time and that therefore
ticularistic. Yet there is a precedent for this.
senseWhether we
of one career or building is a trifling matte
recall Jefferson and Latrobe with their books andcity
tect or archae-
planner has to conceive in longer
ology, Boullee and Ledoux in France, thethe
Adam Brothers
automobile, furniture, or clothing designer
or Soane in Britain, or Schinkel in Germany, the
also to message
get used is
to hitting the moment exactly,
similar. These artists were intensely innovative while de-which will accurately fit. The hi
ing a principle
pending heavily on the collecting instinctssearches
of Neo-classic
only for novelties and exotics in the p
scholarship. If one telescopes and rearranges history at
principled as will
the architect who tries exclusively
(and this ought to be one of the privileges)them
one can likewise
into the present. Therefore the budding a
see that two extraordinarily original architects of theastwen-
planner, distinguished from the experien
tieth century, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd
ought toWright,
be first taught to draw quick balances
have authentic roots running back to Schinkel
andin the former
criticism at fairly regular intervals. The arc
case and to Jefferson and the seventeenth-century
do this American
in practice in order to accomplish a bu
house in the latter. Richardson had much the same relation-
bemoan that we cannot quickly fashion an edu
ship to Norman Shaw, whose work was full outofhistoricisms.
of the novice architect, cannot feed him eno
Can this ratiocination of creativity, despite the
nomics, fact that
sociology, psychology, etc., but the ad
it was apparently one of the initial impulses of modernism,
architectural history is that it deals in models o
be carried too far in a university? In a more specific manner
bodiment of random pressures rather than ult
we might inquire whether sequential and orderly review of
plines successfully resolved. The inherent social
the past can ever equate with its unconscious recollection
sublimated between idea and actuality. This
architect needs to know.
by a modern individualist-with a master's subtle intuition
and touch? The periodicity becomes critical too. Does
The whole excitement of history as part of a
creativity generate like a splendid but distant sun from
derives with a both its scope and dimension
regular flareup, illuminating everything around
should it; or broad
be as is it as possible, the dimension ou
more like attempting to hand on a birthday cake with
limits. can- the recent architect is educate
Whether
dles from generation to generation? This uncertainty
more facts thanishis earlier counterparts is hard
furthered by anxiety about the future-how to measure up
tant as that his awareness of his own time will
according to our increased awareness of the achievements
hensive; and this sense of the present has to be
of history. If it were merely a question of mind over matter
to include the past as well as the future. Immed
it would be easy, but there has to be, we feel, a leavening
protection from the elements, the logistics of m
emotionalism and spirituality injected into the formula.
availability of capital for major schemes are
longer
Wouldn't the rich and fulsome expression of the
history beconstrictions
too they once were for
overpowering for the novice? society.

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
i86

We are forever condemning modern romanticism as an statue with a hole in it to commemorate the bombing of
attempt to retreat into the past; but Neo-Gothicism and Rotterdam, are two artistic intuitions from the years im-
Victorianism in architecture could both be interpreted as mediately following World War II which fittingly recall
positive responses to a new affluence, like the trip to Europethe temptation of modem man to desert his own best in-
to see ARCHITECTURE for the successful realtor. The clinations-to destroy rather than create beauty with the
romantics appear to have been extremely sensible and fore-power he has discovered. God is not dead in our era. He
sighted in that they early recognized that to be a dreamermay only be at the airport waiting for the next plane out.
could be an enormously useful function. Modem history as The urbane and handsome air terminal, even when it is
a visionary evolution or a procession of visionaries hasbrilliantly conceived on the critical path, as Dulles at Wash-
much to recommend it. The architect can balance all facets ington, can never have the same value as a temple in earlier
of contemporary existence, including its technologies and cultures. Greatness does not tarry there. The talk of the
economics in a building, and by so doing reach at last a kindneed for monumentality of a few decades back was as much
of truth which will cause his patrons to feel better andabout that as the need for urban scale. Architecture has to
breathe easier. History furnishes abundant evidence that thelearn how to enthrall greatness once more. Architectural
greatest buildings have been those which signified arrival athistory, if nothing else, can demonstrate that this was ac-
an ideal, at a high point for the whole civilization. Thecomplished once. Possibly we will have to reconcile our-
Parthenon shows even in ruin how eloquent one simpleselves to the assignment of the architect to a role similar in
material may be made, that a hill gains its meaning from futility to the chivalric knight in the Middle Ages, a man
being a summit, that geometry can be linked to reason and who was most important in his being as a leader and a
reason to wisdom and wisdom to beauty and beauty tochampion of the Virgin, to demonstrate that jousting skill
deity, which abides. With all our technical skill, can we ar- and lots of shine, wealth, and finery are never enough in
range such an incredible sequence now? Michelangelo's lit- themselves, that genuine nobility has to be a part of inner as
tle David is twice life size because it represented in a Floren-well as outer finesse. Stripped to its essentials, history is the
tine square something which everyone with a commonembodied dignity of man, or the reminder that he once had
inkling of religious faith and a long look at Roman art could
dignity. And this is a recollection that is necessary to his
believe in with conviction. Brunelleschi's nearby cathedral
continued existence, the avoidance of material, mental, and
dome doesn't convey much structural sophistication but a
emotional anarchy. An isolated architectural happening can
magnificent awareness of what should be where when. Big
have a fierce emotional impact, but it cannot have meaning
buildings in the heart of a city are illogical, but they are
placed for reasons of confidence and affirmation whetherunless it integrates with the environment and people it is
they be skyscrapers or cathedrals. The difference is that insupposed to serve. Op, Pop, and Zap art may reflect the
the Middle Ages the cathedral was large because God had vivid topicality of modern life, but they avoid the harder
come to town, was in residence. task of giving it long-term meaning.
The leaving of the roofless church at Coventry as a pre- To be able to contemplate may be to more nearly know.
liminary court to the new cathedral, and the rough iron That's all the historian can offer, I think.

LEONARD K. EATON

University of Michigan

THE MAJOR PROBLEM in teaching history to the

range under- For these young men and wo
of ability.
graduate in an American architectural school is to get
chitectural him
curriculum is an obstacle race in w
to read and to think about what he has read. This is a some-
nificant hurdles are entitled "Statics," "Stren
what flat and dogmatic statement, and I feel that"Elements
rials," I must im- of Building Design," "Adv
mediately qualify it. I therefore hasten to add that
tectural it does
Design," etc. These are the courses wh
not apply to the able, highly motivated student who will
passed with good grades if the coveted dipl
ordinarily respond to sound presentation of interesting
earned. ma-
For history, enough effort to obtain a
terial like a hungry man with the prospect of a hot meal. It
as adequate. This is the real problem. We ar
applies rather to the large number of students
whereinhistory
the middle
has sufficient status to be acco

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 187

place in the curriculum but where the pressures on the un-
dergraduate are so great that he does not give the subject
the attention which it deserves.
What is the way out of this situation? I have no panaceas
to offer but merely the following observations derived
from personal experience:
Firstly, we need to broaden the scope of our reading as-
signments. We all want to give our students a sense of his-
torical process, and for this objective there is, of course, no
substitute for well-written narrative history. If you are
teaching Greek history, you may well want to begin with
H. D. F. Kitto's The Greeks. When this is mastered, it may
make very good sense to turn to a first-class historical novel
such as Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine. Similarly
there are a lot of excellent historical novels on the mediae-
val period which might be of great help.
Secondly, we should recognize the fact that people are
more likely to read books when they are in paperback edi-
tions. The expansion of the paperback list is the single
greatest service which the publishing industry has rendered
to education during the last decade, and we ought to take
advantage of the opportunity which is ours. Paperbacks
should be assigned as frequently as possible.
Thirdly, in courses in architectural history students ought
to be made to write. There is already enough emphasis on
graphic communication in the curriculum. Pace Marshall
McLuhan, a great many people are going to be communi-
cating by the written word for quite some time to come.
As Walter Taylor used to point out, the history course can
serve a double purpose. It can provide needed cultural back-
ground and it can be a means of developing superior Eng-
lish expression. High standards ought to be demanded.
tory are compilations of fact and lack an ideological frame-
work. Though these works may be worthy efforts in a cer-
tain direction, they will not stimulate the student, and they
will certainly give him no sense of historical process. One
Burckhardt is worth a dozen Banister Fletchers.
Fifthly, in our teaching we need to relate the past to the
present. Most of our students want to be designers of re-
spectable contemporary buildings. Unquestionably they are
more interested in the architecture of the last hundred years
than in that of the remote past. They care more about Louis
Sullivan and John Wellborn Root than about Pierre de
Montereau or the first Master of Chartres. If, however,
it is suggested to them that the problems faced by Root and
Sullivan in the first skyscrapers were in certain respects
analogous to those of the Gothic master buildings, the en-
tire subject will become more meaningful to them. In short,
architectural history will have what Present Conant called
"relevance." This is especially true with regard to problems
of urban design. In an age where architecture deals increas-
ingly with groups of buildings rather than isolated struc-
tures, the study of the great European civic open spaces be-
comes a necessity. One need only cite the comments of
Le Corbusier on Venice.
In general, historians should welcome the movement to-
ward a lengthier curriculum in our architectural schools.
For some time it has been clear that the present five-year
program is inadequate. If properly handled, the longer pro-
gram will enable us to deal with our subject more effec-
tively and to obtain better integration with the other areas
of the curriculum. Moreover, when we consider the in-
creasing emphasis of the architectural profession and of or-

There is no more excuse for sloppy grammar than for ganizations such as the National Park Service on historic
sloppy draftsmanship. preservation, it seems clear that interest in our discipline is
Fourthly, we need to assign books which are strong in at a high point. We should respond by a vigorous effort to
conceptual content. Too many works in architectural his- raise the level of our instruction.

ANTHONY JACKSON
Nova Scotia Technical College

THE TEACHING OF THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE The context of the service course obviously depends on
may give either usable insights into the immediate statewhat
of it services. The school which favored eclectic design
architecture or more philosophical insights into architecture
interested itself in a large sweep of architectural history to
as a venerable human activity. In educational terms, oneshow that underlying all the diversity of style were basic
may be thought of as a service course, the other as a human-
compositional qualities such as unity and character. The
ities elective. Probably over an architect's postgraduate life
functionalists on the other hand ignored the history of ar-
both approaches are equally valuable but each finds its con-
chitecture completely as being irrelevant to the design of
text in a different type of curriculum. buildings that would automatically produce a meaningful

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
i88

style through the solution of contemporary problems by added to American communities suggests why a history of
contemporary means. When a new style had obviously building construction or planning does not parallel a history
come into existence, a heritage was required to show its of appearance, and why the popular architecture of an in-
inevitable progress through a nineteenth century peopled dustrialized society cannot be explained in terms of individ-
with pioneers. And as its achievements became open to ual achievement. Once again the service course that caters
question, a reappraisal of its context took place to more to a school producing artistic prodigies must differ funda-
closely examine the composite roots of its ostensible genesis. mentally from one servicing professional competence. The
The problem, then, is what to service. Since the living future Michelangelo has little interest in the effect of mu-
machine was given a radiant city setting, the architect has nicipal codes on architectural form. The future junior part-
tried to fill the vacuum of urban decision-maker. The ner in a local practice gets a split personality trying to relate
school that does not study the sociology of taste, the eco- his own commonplace problems to the esoteric ideals of the
nomics of construction, or even the occupant use of fur- architectural pantheon.
nishings, concerns itself with program-making without the A small school with few students or staff should be able
investor or engineer, with system-building without the to agree on a definition of architecture as building. Dis-
industrialist or contractor, or with master planning without agreement among half a dozen teachers produces an un-
the developer or politician. The intent of schools of archi- acceptably disjointed curriculum and the student mix is too
tecture now seems to range between the school of building limited to allow for diversity of aptitudes. But, as the school
studies and the school of urban studies. grows, an agreed intention is not only unlikely but un-
The architectural historian who teaches in a school whose desirable. If architecture can range from problem-formula-
larger aspirations outstrip its limited capabilities unwinds a tion through method-analysis to symbolic creation (and
heritage of urban development where architecture can be from single buildings through repetitive type units to the
seen as a specific professional discipline either unconcerned physical form of the city), then the truth is that many dif-
or impotent among the myriad forces that determine its ferent kinds of architects are required within the architec-
form. While Salt the industrialist or Howard the visionary tural profession, and that while the designer-architect has
built a new milieu, architects fought the war of the styles. often been the pedagogic ideal, even within the relatively
When the pendulum swung, and CIAM members demand- simple concept of building, the administrative-architect, the
ed the rehabilitation of the world they lived in, communi- research-architect, the coordinator-architect, the construc-
ties to left, right, and center invested in "city beautiful" tor-architect, and so on are just as valuable to an industry
embellishments. Today in the new towns of Europe or the that accommodates an ever-changing continental popula-
renewal of American cities, a realistic compromise returns tion of over two hundred million people.
the architect as a willing and accepted member of a social Given this variety of ends and a student body large
team, neither superior nor inferior to his multifarious col- enough to contain a sufficient range of aptitudes, the resul-
leagues-not an urban decision-maker, but a professional tant augmented staff can indulge in its own specialties.
with the responsibility for organizing urban components The curriculum is no longer a set course of instruction but a
into physical form. permutation of elective courses which permits each indi-
The architect as urbanist is required to know his ownjob vidual to find his best place in the profession. In this sys-
and to understand the thought patterns of the many other tem, history, like the study of mechanical services or build-
disciplines involved. The architect as builder has far fewer ing economics, changes from a course servicing a specific
complexities to master in order to fulfill satisfactorily his but transient architectural approach to a study in itself with
client's needs. His limitations are conventionally described its own internal discipline and interest. Instead of omnis-
within the synthesis of planning, construction, and appear- cient architects teaching all the courses, psychologists lec-
ance. With architectural history as an adjunct of the history ture on the perception of space, engineers on the applied
of art, the study of the evolution of appearance has largely science of building, administrators on use-efficiency... and
overwhelmed other components of the architectural entity. the architect is left to provide his specialty of organizing
Even within the history of appearance itself, the emphasis is these components into physical form. Where these related
on the achievements of individuals rather than on the every- building-specializations do not currently make exciting
day evolution of an everyday style. While royalty has re- areas of involvement for disciplines fascinated by space
linquished its command of grade school history, genius still travel and other exotic pursuits, and where specialist lec-
dominates the history of architecture. The fact that in the turers cannot be found, the architect has to fill the vacuum.
year that Sullivan completed the Auditorium Building, But where the builder has enlarged his status into that of
around a billion dollars worth of nonresidential fabric was urbanist, and can command respect and support, or where

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 189

the related discipline is itself considered unessential, and to
specialize in building is no admission of incompetence, this
is not necessary.
The art historian who specializes in architectural history
usually treats architecture as an art form. Unlike the archi-
tect historian, he is largely uncommitted to contemporary
problems and regards art as potentially eternal and with
intrinsic relevance. Looking back beyond the recent pres-
ent, he contemplates a past where all the treasures of the
world stand to be investigated. From Egyptian pyramids
through Angkor Thom and Machu Picchu to American
skyscrapers, the art historian can explore his favorite image.
At the same time the rest of the spectrum awaits discovery.
The statistical historian, the transportation historian, the
theological historian, the institutional historian et al.: these
fill in our understanding of architecture as environment.
Any of these specific approaches to why and how build-
ings get built give insight into the nature of architecture;
and while some students may respond to the iconography
of Bernini's church facades, others may be more interested
in why Harlem degenerated into a slum. At the same time
this exposure to the viewpoints of other disciplines counters
an inbred estrangement from the real world that employs
the student after graduation.
Here lies the contrast between the service system and the
elective system. The service course gives a unified archi-
tectural philosophy that brings comfort and direction to the
student and probably lasts him through college, after which
he must sort out all the anomalies that have arisen as life has
changed about him. The elective courses stimulate and con-
fuse him in his wholehearted adoption of any fashion, but
give him a flexibility that permits an individual outlook to
mature as his life-myths gel. For the teacher, the general
course infers a breadth of knowledge that is hard to attain
and may depreciate into superficiality. The specialized
course may be so particular as to defy utility.
Conclusion: When the school is too small for complexity
and too large for single-mindedness, there can only be com-
promise. The area of tuition becomes that of proximity be-
tween the interests of staff and teacher. Beyond this are a
number of possibilities. The student can be asked to do his
own investigations into diverse problems beyond the scope
of the course content. Occasional courses can be found in
other disciplines on the campus. Visiting lecturers provide
a certain corrective balance. The teacher could give other
specific courses as part of a program of general electives. A
library of video-tapes could be collected of classes held by
specialist lecturers in other universities and these could be
collated, presented, and added to by a staff architectural
historian acting as editor. The outcome may be speculative,
but then architectural historians are no better off than
those who teach other subjects in schools of architecture.

SPIRO KOSTOF

University of California, Berkeley

FEW SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE in American uni-

explain to inquirers" (I.i.5). And until relatively recently,
versities today would consider omitting the study of archi-
students of architecture were still forced to spend many
tectural history from their professional curriculum. Thehours drawing Corinthian capitals, Gothic finials, and ca-
phobia of history, ushered in some decades ago with the vetto cornices. To kill historicism it was necessary to kill
International Style, receded as the primacy of the moderhistory.
idiom became ensured. That phobia was based on the prem- Since then two things happened which have reshaped the
ise that since the imitation of historical styles was evil, the
relationship of architecture and history. Historicism-at
study of history itself had to be eschewed in the education
least in the guise of revivals-died away, and was thought
of the modern architect if he was now successfully to with-
presumably beyond resurrection; as a result, the bond of
stand the temptations of revivalism. The avowed aim of practical dependence between architecture and history was
historical study had always been to enable the architect to
believed permanently severed. And at the same time, the
imitate or emulate the past with erudition and authority.study of history, begun early in this century as an objective,
Two thousand years ago Vitruvius had written, in his chap-
independent discipline in its own right, continued to grow
ter on the Education of an Architect, that "a wide knowl-strong and develop its own methods of research and its own
edge of history is requisite because, among the ornamentaltraining. The roles of historian and architect, often merged
parts of an architect's design for a work, there are many thein one person until this time, now by and large stood apart.
underlying idea of whose employment he should be able toThe historian of architecture received an academic training

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I90

in departments of art history-a training which precluded

not feel justified in omitting the sculptural progra
discussion
any exposure to professional practice as such. of the Gothic cathedral, or the decorati
The training
of the architect, on the other hand, now once again em-
of mosaic from a discussion of a Byzantine chur
braced history, though duly exorcised and deprived of its
same token, a Renaissance building is not exclu
powers of literal suggestion. History figuredabstract
as one part of of visual order but a construction
design
state licensing examinations together with design, building
managed, somehow, to stand up and to remain st
construction, professional administration, and2.
the like.
A historical building is not an isolated object,
The question, then, seems no longer to be whether to in-
unto itself. It derives a large part of its character
man-made
clude history in the education of an architect, but why ortonatural environment in which it w
include it. Is it, simply, the story of his profession, and there-
to stand. Every change in this environment will
fore part of his general education? Or shouldfected
there the
nowcharacter
be of the building. The history
another kind of practical relevance to the study of history
tecture is, in part, the study of the interaction of
which could replace the older relevance of formal
with imitation
nature and with one another. A Roman
or emulation? And the answer to this is not unrelated to the
meaningful only within the urban situation whi
further matter of who should teach history toits the architect
scale and its environmental responsibility; a Gr
and how he should do so. For if it is a subjectple
of (as
independent
Vincent Scully has shown) is committed to
merit, the teaching of history should be properly consigned
scape forms of its particular site.
to the care of trained historians-that is, scholars with de-
It is therefore not necessary, or even warranted
grees in the history of art and with areas ofsider
historical spe- building, or building complex, as
the single
cialization. If history is to be pertinent to the
validpractice
unit ofofstudy for architectural history. Urb
architecture, then it should be taught only defined
by people
bywho
more than one building, streets, inde
have had professional training in architecture,
towns, are or
whether equally valid. A course on the envir
not they might in addition be professional historians.
history of the city of Rome from its origins to the
It is my prejudice that the teaching of the history of archi-
asjustifiable as the traditional courses on historical
tecture has no concrete and measurable bearing on the con-
"Gothic architecture," "Baroque architecture," et
temporary practice of architecture. The impact
3. of
Byhistory,
the same argument, the history of archit
its relevance, is vital, indeed elemental, in thenot
growth of the of monuments. Humble building
the history
architect: but this impact, this relevance, isular
a personal ex-building, and primitive building t
modes of
perience, it involves no universally applicablecannot
prescriptions,
be abandoned to archaeology or-anthro
and therefore cannot be taught. What can besome related
taught, whatfield whose interest in them will be
must be taught, is the unbiased and sympathetictary. effort to
It is perhaps time that we gave up the aristoc
understand past buildings in their total context.
ofBy "total con-
architecture (as expressed in N. Pevsner's c
text" I mean the following: opening of An Outline of European Architecture:
I. that the physical presence of each building will
shed is be
a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of
studied in its entirety; ture.") in favor of a more inclusive concept of env
2. that the building will be thought of in 4.
a broader
Past buildings are not physical presences a
physical framework than itself; treat exhaustively of what they are does not exon
3. that all past buildings will be deemed worthy
historian of asking why they are there, why th
from
attention and study; and way they are. The problem is larger and more seri
4. that nonphysical aspects of any building's
questexistence
for origins and a respect for sequence (Scott's
will be considered indispensable for a proper under-
fallacy). It is not to assume a historical determinism
standing of that building. wherein each building will be considered the n
I. The physical presence of a building isproduct
inviolate. To predecessors. Nor do I mean that a p
of its
consider past buildings merely as structuraling
envelopes or studied as the product of its social
should be
merely as envelopes of form would be to Architecture
disregard this
does not reflect the prevalent Zeitgeist
physical integrity. The preoccupation with of the factors
structure leadsthat defines and informs it.
to technological determinism (Geoffrey Scott's mechanical
Either of these approaches, the biological or th
fallacy): the other preoccupation results often in the exclu-
logical, would tend to see historical buildings as r
sive concern with historical styles, or conventions of circumstances.
external form My concern is that each b
(which might be called the aestheticfallacy,seen
and as
ofanwhich
individual solution which contains its m
Scott himself was, in a way, guilty). The historian should
its physical form. The Old Kingdom pyramid,

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 I9I

antique villa, the Fatimid mosque are conveniences, not
realities: each pyramid, villa, or mosque was an answer to a
specific challenge, and is therefore eloquent of private
meaning-which should be the historian's ultimate goal.
This meaning can be released by the historian, it seems to
me, only when physical form is taken by him to be an ex-
pression of ritual. I say ritual because to talk of function, of
Wotton's "Commodity," would be to undermine and
mechanize this most worthwhile concern of architectural
history. The function of a tomb is to house the dead. But
how informative is this fact when applied to the tomb
pyramid of Cheops, that megalomaniacal pile of masonry
weighing millions of tons and raised, mountainlike, to a
height of 470 feet? "All architecture," as Ruskin once wrote,
"proposes an effect on the human mind, not merely a serv-
ice to the human frame." Ritual is the poetry of function,
and insofar as every building is shaped by ritual it does not
simply house function but comments upon it.
The presentation of past architecture in its total context
is, in brief, the historian's task vis-a-vis the student of archi-
tecture. In doing so the historian discourages prejudices and
inspires attitudes whose relevance to the student's own
historian as it was. We have no control over what hap-
pened: we have the duty to understand sympathetically and
intelligently why it happened. The critic, on the other hand,
has no relevant commitment to the past except as an object
lesson for the present. To scold the nineteenth century for
what it did or did not do is, for the historian, a luxury and
personal indulgence. To insist that it should not be repeated
is useful, and the proper function of the critic. History,
properly taught, will inevitably establish that quality is not
an absolute, and that the terms of quality are set by each
period, if not by each building.
The history of architecture is one. It should not mean
something to the professional architecture student and quite
another thing to the liberal arts student or the history of art
major. But the architectural historian, too, is one, and I have
outlined above his total responsibility as I see it. Whether
history is taught in schools of architecture by academic his-
torians with high degrees in art history, or by architect-
historians (or by a type of instructor for whom, as I believe,
there is as yet no graduate training) seems to me immaterial.
As long as the academic historian does not confine himself

work will emerge unpreached. The future architect wants
above all to be told what architecture is good, what bad: it
is the historian's special responsibility not to oblige. His task
is not that of the critic. The critic speaks of architecture as it
should be (his domain, therefore, is only the present); the
to a preoccupation with styles, origins, and chronology; as
long as the architect-historian does not confine himself to a
search in history for some prejudice of his own practice or
the practice of his time, both are serviceable as teachers of
history for the student of architecture.

FREDERICK D. NICHOLS

University of Virginia

THE REVOLUTION IN THE ARTS that occurred in the

was not well with the teaching of architecture, and e
decades before World War I, overturned many acceptedkinds were made to strengthen the sc
of various
conventions. For the first time in some five hundred
Coursesyears a
in the history of architecture were increase
completely new vocabulary and grammar of architecture
new ways to make them more effective were introd
had been established. But architectural education was slow
It is apparent that architectural students need a sp
to change, even though new demands and new materials
board for their imagination. While technology ch
had made the practice of traditional design no longer prac-
rapidly, human needs and aspirations change but litt
ticable nor desirable.
least some of the designer's tools remain as they were
Along with drawing (once the basic cornerstone in all
past, and an acquaintance with the past can only add
architectural schools) the history of architecture was largely
bility to his imagination. Certainly, Le Corbusier's e
eliminated, if not abolished altogether. It was believed by an art historian, and his wanderings arou
studies with
the most advanced educators that it might impede the crea-
Mediterranean, provided a sound foundation for a bri
tive effort, and stifle the imagination of the young andWe
career. sus-
have tried to integrate history into the cu
ceptible designer. The warning of George Santayana
lum so it was
will not be a separate discipline, but will rel
disregarded: that those who are ignorant of the the whole.
past are
condemned to repeat it. For example, one such innovation was introduced
At any rate, by the late I95os, it became apparent that all
the first-year design class. Several buildings by an out

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
192

ing modern architect were selected, and groups of students Term papers are important tools for the teaching of archi-
were asked to pick one of them, and draw plans, sections, tectural history, especially when they are illustrated with
and elevations. Finally they made a model, showing im- drawings made by the design students. They acquire addi-
portant details and structure. Thus each group obtained in- tional drawing skills as well as training in oral and written
timate knowledge of one building, and could compare it presentation, research methods and techniques, and, perhaps
with others by the same architect. most important of all, their critical sense is sharpened.
Sometimes students are asked to do research on a nearby From time to time design problems are utilized in which
town or a complex of old buildings, which is then supple- the integration of a new design complex into an existing
mented with drawings and measurements made on the spot. neighborhood is one of the goals.
The student is encouraged by this means to discover for Models of various historical buildings or towns have been
himself relationships between buildings and the spaces they found to serve as excellent teaching tools. They are particu-
create. Again, city planning students are asked to work on larly effective when groups of students have been assigned
collaborative problems. Surveys are made of various towns to a single model, and thus it has been possible to complete
and cities in Virginia. History and planning students then the model without the students spending an undue amount
work with the architects in redeveloping various streets and of time on the mechanics of making it.
blocks, and all students obtain the useful experience of col- With the instigation of vast new programs to aid our de-
laborating with each other. caying cities, it has become imperative that our students
Another innovation at the University of Virginia has have a knowledge and respect for our national heritage.
offered the student a wide range of courses to choose from They must have the broad background that will enable
after he has completed the general survey course which them to prevent the wholesale demolition of historic areas,
acquaints him with the continuity of history. He may and the indiscriminate bulldozing of segments of our im-
choose additional courses from the following: ancient archi- portant urban centers.
tecture, renaissance, baroque, English and American from As early as I958 an undergraduate course leading to a
I600 to 800o, Spanish and Latin-American, as well as a bachelor's degree in the history of architecture at the Uni-
study of the ideas of the theorists, the architecture of the versity of Virginia was developed for a limited number of
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and of the Far East. students because of the need for architectural historians to
These concentrated courses, in which the instructor has the serve as curators and editors, or to work on urban renewal
time to go into the history of a period in depth, are designed and planning projects, and on architectural surveys. These
to give the student a sound foundation for the study of students were given courses in design and construction as
architecture as an art, and as an integral part of its environ- well as history, so they would thoroughly understand the
ment.
importance of all aspects of building. The success of this
When the enrollment in classes is limited and the advan-
course led to the establishment two years ago of a program
tages of the seminar can be exploited, individual presenta-
leading to the master's degree, which we plan to expand to
include much-needed courses in restoration.
tion of research papers, and class discussions, are utilized.

EDUARD F. SEKLER

Harvard University

. . . where scholarship decays, mythdimensional

will crowd in. design who creatively articulates space
visual
Ernst H. Gombrich
for practical purposes. His most important particular ac-
tivity then is a special kind of visual design, linked to and
conditioned by many related activities.
BEFORE WE ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE what function The architectural design activity differs significantly from
the teaching of architectural history may have in the educa-
other kinds of design activity such as engineering design or
tion of a future architect, and how it may best be done, we
graphic design in that it produces results which are capable
obviously must find out first whom we mean when we talk
of deliberately affecting us in the same way as works of art
of an architect. In spite of continuous changes in his role, without at the same time ever losing their status as environ-
I believe he is still best described as a specialist in three-ment. Environment here designates the totality of our sur-

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

roundings which for our experience of space and time is
as real as we are to ourselves.
Architecture as part of the environment never ceases to
share the actual space and time which is real in our own ex-
perience of the self. In this respect architecture differs from
most works of painting and sculpture, at least of the past,
because these have an intrinsic space and time which is vir-
tual, not actual, and of which we become fully aware only
in the act of aesthetic experience. When we look at a paint-
ing of an evening landscape the way it was meant to be
looked at, the space and time of the painting will be real for
us, but not in the same sense as the space and time of our
own existence, or of an actual evening landscape. When we
experience a work of architecture the way it was meant to
be, we may have as intensive an aesthetic experience as with
any work of art; but the space and time of the work of ar-
chitecture will be at the same time the real space and time of
our own existence. At present there seems to be a trend for
all visual arts to aspire to the status of environment and else-
where I have tried to interpret this phenomenon of "en-
vironmentalist art."1 But this general tendency does not
change the fact that a special responsibility accrues to the
architect from the particular way in which his creations in-
volve the real space and time of our experience.
The special capacity for purposeful three-dimensional
visual creation which characterizes the architect depends on
a number of factors which are as yet little understood and
among which the effect of his professional education is only
one. But we can be certain that everything in his education
should contribute to enhance both the special capacity
which counts most, and the awareness of his special social
responsibility. As far as the teaching of architectural history
is concerned, there are three ways in which this can be done,
and I shall discuss them moving from the more general to
the more specific.
First of all, architectural history may simply contribute to
making a future architect a better educated human being
with a higher level of general culture and responsibility. In
achieving this goal the study of architectural history may do
what any successful study of history does in the course of
one's education: it may sharpen the awareness about one's
own location and condition in the great process of change
around the individual.
Ideally a "sense of history" may be acquired-a critical
cognizance of context, of memories and links in time and
place that may be both disturbing and reassuring and that
can lead to a strong sense of responsibility for one's own
actions. It may also lead, by a forward extension of the same
i. "The Visual Environment," The Fine Arts and the University
(Toronto, 1965), pp. 8I-85.
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
193
kind of awareness, to a strong willingness to be open-
minded and realistic with regard to the future. But all this
could be achieved equally well by any historical study with-
out detailed reference to the architecture of the past. When
it performs this educational service, architectural history
could be replaced by any facet of cultural or social history;
it does not perform anything which is specific to its own
nature; it does not deal with questions specifically archi-
tectural and visual.
The importance of this first aspect of architectural history
in an architectural curriculum will vary a great deal depend-
ing on the level of historical awareness and preparation
which exists already among the students. Exposure to the
general problems of man's relation to the past may be taken
for granted in students who come to their professional
studies with a good college background in the Liberal Arts.
It may be completely lacking in other students whose pre-
vious studies were predominantly technical or pre-profes-
sional in a narrow sense.
To write here about the manner in which architectural
history should be handled when it is chiefly concerned with
the tasks of history in general would be out of place and
presumptuous in view of the vast amount of effort profes-
sional historians have expended clarifying their basic assump-
tions and their attitudes towards the "philosophy of his-
tory." However, considering some recent writing in archi-
tectural history, it may not be amiss to state once again, at
the danger of belaboring the obvious, that a quest for truth
is still at the root of all genuine historical research and
teaching; we may be well aware of the many qualifications
we must bring to the concept of "historical truth" but this
does not absolve us from the duty to keep historical time
and personal time as neatly separated as we can. When criti-
cism of the present and exposition of the past are done by
the same person, it should be made quite clear when the
critic speaks and when the historian, and even the implica-
tion should be shunned that history may serve as a useful
quarry to furnish material for polemical diatribes or enthu-
siastic paens needed for topical utilization.
In addition to its task in the general humanistic and moral
education of a future architect, the study of architectural
history has a second, more specialized function to fulfill; it
deals with the specifically architectural problems and their
visual implications, using as a basis for discussion the visual
evidence from actual architectural monuments of the past.
This is an aspect of teaching architectural history that usu-
ally comes to mind first: the exposure of future architects to
a rich visual heritage, to forms and spaces, textures and
colors which can greatly broaden their visual experience.
Every confrontation with historical material can become
at the same time an enriching of the students' store of rele-
 194
vant strong images, and a lesson in learning how to see.
It seems most superfluous in this context to insist on the
need for the highest possible quality of the visual material
which is presented. But I am afraid many slide and photo-
graphic collections in schools of architecture are still far
from ideal and particularly the potential of new media such
as film, multiscreen-projection, slide-tape etc. has barely
been tapped.
Yet from what little we know about the creative process
in the visual arts, it seems likely that an important role is
played by images which made a strong impression once and
then were forgotten, only to come to the fore again unwit-
tingly when imagination called them forth in new contexts
and with many modifications. If this is so, it places a heavy
responsibility on the teacher of architectural history as to
how he makes his selection of examples to be presented, and
how he presents and analyzes them.
A very rigorous selection is one of the most important
and difficult tasks and is imperative for a number of reasons.
Chief among them is the fact that buildings which are dis-
cussed should become realities for the student. How can he
derive any valid insights from something which does not
become a three-dimensional reality for him, even if it is a
reality he has to construct in his imagination? A building
will only become a reality, rather than a two-dimensional
image with perhaps a name and date attached to it, if the
teacher makes every possible effort to present it fully-
which means that he takes the necessary time and uses all
possible means including drawings and photographs, mod-
els and films. Ideally, confrontation with the actual monu-
ment on its site not only should be included but should
take precedence. In many cases this is impracticable, but it is
not as utopian a demand as it may sound if we consider the
fantastic increase of possibilities to travel quickly and inex-
pensively which exist. However, even a visit to the monu-
ment alone is not enough if it is not coupled with induce-
ment to the kind of intensive and purposeful study, analysis,
and interpretation that leads to genuine "mental acquisition."
Such study may also be an opportunity (sometimes the
only one in an entire curriculum) to introduce a future ar-
chitect to the methods of scholarly research, and to the skills
of concise verbal exposition. In some cases written reports
and visual documentation which result from a student's in-
tensive dialogue with an architectural monument of the past
may become valuable beyond their first purpose as educa-
tional devices; measured drawings and surveys done by
architectural students can become significant historic evi-
dence, at times the only one to remain behind after a build-
ing has been pulled down.
The second function of the study of architectural history
which we have just discussed has turned out to be centered
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
around the actual monuments and their thorough critical
study. Exposure to strong visual and aesthetic experiences
and to disciplined methods of research emerged as the de-
sirable outcome. But again there are studies other than ar-
chitectural history which could achieve somewhat similar
results. On the one hand there are courses in the history of
painting and sculpture; on the other hand, courses which
present the elements of visual experience and visual creation
in a nonhistorical and purely morphological or psychologi-
cal framework.2 Apparently we still have not arrived at a
function of architectural history that would appear uniquely
its own, warranting demands on a student's time in courses
other than those of general history, art history, or of intro-
duction to the elements of visual creation.
The question of what constitutes a particular or proper
educational task of architectural history unavoidably leads
to a consideration of its third and most controversial func-
tion, which is to help in some way with the establishment
of principles, of a theory of architecture.
Like many others, I do not think there is or can be one
normative theory of architecture derived from historical
study. I believe, however, that there can and should be
theories of architecture, and their influence should not be
underestimated. Indeed throughout much of the history of
architecture there was something like a fugal interplay of
parallel movements existing between theory and practice
which makes a knowledge of the one extremely useful in
illuminating the other. But this recognition, though inter-
esting to the historian, may not be of much help to a future
architect when he looks for assistance with decisions he has
to make during the process of creation. When he faces the
problem Le Corbusier described so well: "At twenty-three,
our man drew on his sketching board the faCade of a house
he was going to build. A perturbing question arose in his
mind: 'What is the rule that orders, that connects all
things?' . . . Great disquiet, much searching, many ques-
tions."3 Every teacher of architecture knows that his stu-
dents need most, next to a training in methods and skills of
design and often inseparably linked to it, a guidance which
will enable them to formulate their own set of basic assump-
tions and value judgments about architecture, their own
insights into what constitutes the core of architectural crea-
tion.
Apodictical definitions here would seem to be useless to-
2. Experience at Harvard with two such courses over a number of
years has shown that they serve an extremely useful function not
only for undergraduates in general but also for graduate students in
a design field, exposing them to a comprehensive, nonspecialized
view.
3. Le Corbusier, The Modulor, translated P. de Francia & A. Bos-
tock (Cambridge, Mass., I954), p. 26.

day, though they are often given and accepted with great
eagerness, because, for somebody trying to perform a crea-
tive act, only that is relevant which he has worked out or dis-
covered for himself, which has become his spiritual property
through honest acquisition. What he takes over as ready-
made, finished formulations from others cannot become
part of his own creative process, but remains on the sur-
face and, in architecture, leads to formalism. In this context
a theory of architecture becomes something very personal.
The term "theory" is used here in a sense that does not
imply a slightly deprecatory comparison to practice, but
indicates a total view and assessment which includes the
recognition of operative principles. It is a set of basic as-
sumptions and value judgments together with a working
terminology which has been clarified with the greatest pos-
sible precision. At any given moment there may be many
theories which will always overlap to a large extent, but
will rarely be identical and will sometimes clash. At times
one theory may be formulated with such clarity and power
of persuasion that it may exert a considerable influence; at
other times such formulations are lacking perhaps because
historical circumstances make them impossible.
The process of formulating a theory is based on an inten-
sive critical confrontation of problems in practice that are
properly architectural, i.e. pertaining to the activity of the
architect as defined at the outset of this essay. Usually the
problems are those of the contemporary architectural scene.
But with them it is often difficult-if not impossible (unless
one has already a set of criteria)-to arrive at clear judg-
ments, because they are too close and one is too engaged.
It is here that I see one of the great and real uses of architec-
tural history: it presents innumerable opportunities for case
studies of problems which are far enough removed to per-
mit a comprehensive and quiet view. True, we can never
attain an entirely disengaged view of any portion of his-
tory; but it is equally true that it is easier to arrive at dis-
passionate evaluations about things past than about those
where one has to feel passionately because they concern a
present in which one is creatively involved. It also seems
easier to distrust doctrinaire statements when they are made
about architecture of the past than when they refer to the
present.
I believe it is entirely legitimate to use the architecture of
the past as a laboratory in the process of finding out how
principles and theories may be derived in architecture, as
long as one does not try to arrive at predictions for the fu-
ture from one's findings, and as long as one realizes that
different investigators may arrive at different conclusions
from the same set of data because they had put different
questions.
Every teacher will have personal convictions about the
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I95
selection of data-what he considers the most relevant mon-
uments and their sequence-and about the questions he
wishes to pose and to answer in his personal synthesis of in-
terpretational method. Personally I have found it fruitful
pedagogically to concentrate on buildings which were in-
teresting from the point of view of space and structure, and
permitted comparisons between different solutions to the
same distinctly formulated architectural problem while giv-
ing a maximum of insight into the creative process.
I have also found it very necessary and valuable to discuss
not only monumental architecture and great moments in
the history of architecture but also simple dwellings and
their arrangements in various types of settlement patterns.
Some significant examples of urban design are always in-
cluded because they remind students of the fact that build-
ings, as a rule, cannot be understood in isolation and di-
vorced from their social context.
Whenever it was feasible-because sufficient evidence
was available-I have tried to approach analysis and inter-
pretation from the "inside" point of view of a designer
faced with an identical problem rather than from the "out-
side" view of a merely interested observer. This, of neces-
sity, leads to a morphological method of interpretation, a
method that considers form as the result of a genetic process
and tries to investigate the conditions and laws of this pro-
cess: both the external conditions which are influential-
whether physical or social, economical or political-and the
internal conditions which are brought forth by the inner
logic of the creative process. When used successfully, the
morphological method should help a student to recognize
almost everything which is visible or "made visible" in a
work he explores.
I am convinced that, in the study of architectural history,
the most effective way of reaching a future architect is
through the eye. To have an architectural monument be-
fore one's eyes and to realize that one had not seen some of
its relevant features until they were pointed out-perhaps
with the aid of a telling comparison-is an experience
which can initiate a true process of learning; curiosity will
be stimulated by the surprise and this can become the first
step in a search for reasons-a search that may lead to an
understanding of the way in which creative free will and
outside constraints and conditions interlock in the genesis of
any work of architecture. From such an understanding in
turn the bases for a criticism may be derived that is founded
on more than purely personal emotional reactions.
A teacher of architectural history will be the more help-
ful and valuable to his students the more he can keep him-
self open to their attitude which is, or should be, funda-
mentally one of questioning and searching. He should have
answers to some of their questions because he has been
I96

searching for a longer time; but he should forever be ready
to question his own answers in the light of their new ques-
tions. In my own case, I simply carry on as a teacher what
began more than twenty years ago as a purely personal un-
dertaking when I left architectural school and found it nec-
essary to construct for myself a consistent framework of
architectural principles. It appears symptomatic in historic
perspective that I should have turned to a study of history
for guidance.
When I finally arrived at the formulation of my princi-
ples they turned out to be-in an original sense of the term
"principle"-points of departure in a continuous process,
rather than static guideposts. Similarly, theory (again in an
original sense of the term) has come to mean an intensive
seeing; a seeing informed by concern and a sense of wonder,
not a static total system of applicable precepts. I think I owe
my profound awareness of the dynamic character of theory
and principles to my study of architectural history, and I
believe that such awareness is a decisive factor in the teach-
ing of architectural history to future architects. In this way
only, architectural history can become a tool students may
find helpful in their search. Whenever it is misused today
for direct formal inspiration, it becomes a dangerous toy.4
4. The author wishes to thank James Ackerman and Hans Buch-
wald for their helpful critical comments.

MARCUS WHIFFEN

Arizona State University

SOME FEW YEARS AGO, at an SAH meeting in days

off New we
York,
probably enjoy ourselves more than
there was a panel discussion of the uses of architectural
in the room, his-
except for the student here and t
tory for the architect. At least, that was the nominal
special subject
insight, or a special aptitude for inventing
of the discussion. Not even the presence of
ofa diversion.
distinguished
How can we justify it, and ourselv
practising architect on the panel could make it the
never actual
been able to convince myself that it would
subject. What everyone talked about was the
touses
do soofif
history
the alternative to history were simpl
for the architecture student. that part of the mind into which history finds its
This is not surprising. Until we know more about
however, thethe case; the alternative to histor
is not
creative process that results in architectureItthan
maywe yet
well bedo,
that in the final analysis the diff
we shall not, I suspect, be able to say much to myth
tween the point
and history is one of degree only. Y
about the uses of history for the practising architect.
ences of degree(Ofmay be as important as differen
course this goes for dead architects as welland
as live
this is oneasby which our age, believing itself
ones;
things are, much of our historians' talk about influences
sets andThough not an elixir, architectu
much store.
so forth must be largely guesswork ) That practising
even in thearchi-
small doses in which the average st
tects themselves (Philip Johnson excepted) can it,
absorb tell
isus so
a prophylactic against the growth o
little about the uses history has had for themIt is
is surely be- said that history should be taugh
sometimes
cause it is often used most effectively whenrather
it is used
thanuncon-
in breadth. In the situation in which
sciously. It may even be that the history that
findis ourselves,
most usefuldepth and breadth are not practi
for the architect is the history he has forgotten.
tives. Survey courses are facts of life, and I for
However, nothing can be forgotten until thatit has is
there been
something to be said for them; the
learned. So what should be learned by the which
studentthey
who impose
is can lead one to examine
one day to be a practising architect? Or-tocriteria
put theasques-
almost nothing else can. As for how s
tion in the form it takes for us as teachers-what should be
should be taught, I doubt if there is any advanta
taught? As soon as we have rephrased it thus, another,
doning quite
chronology, which after all is the princip
fundamental question presents itself, namely:ever Why should
organic form may be discoverable in the p
once
architectural history be taught at all? This is teach athat
a question course in modern architecture b
every teacher of architectural history muststarting
ask himself,
from and
the present, in the belief that it is a
must answer to his own satisfaction if he is to
to proceed in
continue his the known to the unknown. It
from
own kind of self-indulgence with a quiet conscience. There
a sound plan, but my assumption that we would
we stand, class after class, week after week, semester
ing after
from the known proved to be unfounded.)
semester, talking about things that interest us; even on our
lieve-in opposition to the opinion of some dis

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

architectural educators, as I am well aware-that it is per-
missible to talk to architecture students about styles, and
that the concept of style in the art-historical sense is a valu-
able one so long as it is used in the interests of differentiation
rather than as a mere means of classification.
Students, in my experience, are averse to differentiation
as a principle. Many of them seem to be under some psycho-
logical compulsion to concentrate on similarities to the
exclusion of differences. It is not only differences in degree
that they are unhappy with; they would prefer, one some-
times thinks, that there were no differences of kind. Start a
class discussion about the relationship of architecture and
sculpture; it will not be long before someone says that
Ronchamp is sculpture, and from that moment it will take
all you can interject to keep things going, because more
than half the class will have made the comforting deduction
that there is no real difference between the two arts. The
teacher of architectural history has a responsibility to show
that differences are immeasurably more interesting and
more important than similarities; in the infinite variety of
the architecture of the past he also has the means.
Yet there is one difference that architecture students not
only recognize but tend to regard as absolute: the difference
between the present and the past. One cannot blame them;
like the rest of us, they are subjected to a constant barrage
of propaganda designed to persuade our age that it is unique,
that the factors that control human destiny are not the same
as they were in the past, that we have (as I have heard it put)
"entered the era of post-historic man." Acceptance of these
views manifests itself in the belief, which seems to have be-
come part of the official doctrine of the architectural pro-
fession in America, that architecture is a much more com-
plex affair today than it ever was in the past.
It is more than a hundred years since Viollet-le-Duc, with
the aid of a neat application of the biological fallacy,
"proved" that architecture must necessarily grow more
complex with the passage of time. "In the terrestrial econ-
omy the tendency is always towards increased complexity;
the organism of a man is more complex than that of a
batrachian." More recently, Le Corbusier made a practising
architect's comment: "Pour Ledoux, c'etait facile-pas des
tubes." And for Ledoux it often was easy, of course: not
only no ductwork but no client and no builder. Most of the
architects who figure as conspicuously as he does in the his-
tory books were less (or more?) fortunate.
The client and the builder figure hardly at all in most of
the history books, and in the classroom it is easy to forget
them. They should not be forgotten. Show that the client's
objection to skylights had at least as much to do with the
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I97
strange proportions of the anteroom of the Laurentian Li-
brary as any determination on Michelangelo's part to create
a Mannerist space, and the difference between the present
and the past (even if the client was a pope) begins to look
less absolute. Show how carefully the architect of a Gothic
cathedral had to study the builder's requirements, how
many features of the building had a constructional as well as
-to borrow Pugin's terminology-a practical and a mysti-
cal intention, and it will appear that in one respect at least
our age, with its mechanization of construction, has sim-
plified the architect's task. As for that ductwork, one may
point out that in the past architects were often given much
trouble by vertical ducts called chimneys, whose efficiency
depended altogether upon the architect's skill in designing
them and not at all upon the devices of mechanical engi-
neers. (That the delegation to the mechanical engineers of
responsibility for "climate control" has in fact resulted in a
gross oversimplification of architectural design has been
forcefully argued by James Fitch.)
Of course those who talk of the complexity of architec-
ture today are not thinking exclusively of structural and
mechanical complexity; they are thinking also of the need
for the contemporary architect to be acquainted with the
findings of psychology, of sociology, and even (if Reyner
Banham is right) of"the new biology," and to incorporate
them somehow in his designs. In this connection the teacher
of architectural history can usefully show that the architect
has assumed the universal man's burden before, and sur-
vived it; and he may suggest that it is often what Alberti
describes (in Leoni's translation) as the "common error of
ignorance, to maintain that what it does not know does not
exist," that makes it appear that the architect's terms of
reference and the conditions of his programs were so much
simpler in the past than they are today. This, not with any
view to discrediting the new sciences, or denying that the
architect is faced with new problems, but to challenge
the notion (which is surely as dangerous for the future
of architecture as it must be discouraging for the architec-
ture student) that the architect's task has entered a state of
unparalleled complexity.
In spite of the journals and the societies and the confer-
ences and the cliques and the cosy academic feuds, the lot of
any humanist today is a lonely one. The architectural his-
torian's sense of isolation may be intensified in a school of
architecture, for his contacts with others whose main in-
terests are the same as his are likely to be irregular and few.
Yet it is here that he can pay his debt to the present (which
is the debt that no one is forgiven) out of his knowledge of
the past.
 198
Editor's Postscript
IN CONCLUSION, it may be appropriate to consider the
effect which the development of historical studies in archi-
tecture is having on current architectural theory; and in this
respect, no recent publication could be more worthy of
analysis than Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction
in Architecture. He is not the first influential architect in the
last half-century to expound his theory of architecture by
reference to buildings of the past. Indeed, as Vincent Scully
observes in his characteristically brilliant preface, a com-
parison between Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
and Vers une Architecture is particularly instructive and prof-
itable. Yet whereas Le Corbusier made no pretence of ex-
ceptional art-historical scholarship, the recondite and nu-
merous precedents cited by Robert Venturi seem to be a
deliberate testimony of the influence which the New Archi-
tectural History is having on today's leading practitioners
and teachers of architectural design.
Hence this recent book must inevitably interest all teach-
ers of architectural history; but it should prompt them to
evaluate more cautiously the current relationship between
history and theory, since it raises the issue of the extent to
which creative artists really do need historical support for
their ideas. Robert Venturi's book professes to put forward
a philosophy demonstrated by historical precedent. But in
fact, this philosophy seems to be supported solely by his-
torical forms, rather than by historical ideas; hence it seems
debatable whether the type of validity he claims for those
forms is really justified.
He attempts to justify his thesis by associating it with
Mannerism, and defends Mannerism on grounds similar to
those employed by John Summerson in The Classical Lan-
guage of Architecture (1964), where Bramante's work is clas-
sified as "prose" whilst Giulio Romano's is classified as
"poetry." This view of Mannerism is also, of course, at the
root of Le Corbusier's panegyric on Michelangelo, though
in the I920s the lack of the necessary art-historical termin-
ology prevented Le Corbusier from stating his case with the
same clarity as Robert Venturi. Yet although the latter
seems to employ a specifically historical scholarship, one
may wonder whether he is not, like Le Corbusier, simply
exercising the artist's right to be inspired by whatever
forms take his fancy, and using history only to illustrate
rather than to justify his choice. To put it more bluntly, is
the extensive erudition which he crams into seventy-five
pages really a historical proof of his thesis, or is it a subtle
device for by-passing historical proof under a smoke-screen
of name-dropping kunstwissenschaft?
In my opinion his argument needs no historical support;
but assuming this to be of value, his argument would have
been more forceful if he had selected fewer examples, and
This content downloaded from
139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
given these a fuller historical analysis-though the psycho-
logical advantage to be gained by bludgeoning his readers
with historical monuments at the average rate of seventeen
per page should not be underestimated. But architectural
historians and architectural critics would probably find his
arguments easier to assess-though far less stimulating-if
the many controversial examples (such as the chapel at
Fresnes) had been weeded out, and more space devoted to
the structure, planning, and sociological context of the ex-
amples which remained. Indeed, some examples are only
relevant if one ignores completely their historical and even
their literary context.
For example, figure 58 shows the facade of Ledoux's
"Gateway at Bourneville."* No plan is reproduced, but the
accompanying text on pages 44-45 states: "In the project
for a gateway at Bourneville by Ledoux, the columns in the
arch are structurally rhetorical if not redundant. Expres-
sively, however, they underscore the abstractness of the
opening as a semicircle more than an arch, and they further
define the opening as a gateway." Now an inspection of the
plan shows not only that the columns are far from being
structurally redundant (since the monumental "arch" is
subdivided internally to contain rooms for two guards and
a gardener); it also shows that the giant flanking columns,
which are even more "rhetorical," stand on windowless
cylindrical substructures which in fact house a dairy and a
laundry respectively. In other words, although Robert Ven-
turi's theory seems (and unquestionably is) extraordinarily
pertinent and valid, Ledoux's theory was the complete an-
tithesis of the ideals which he is urging.
It may be said, then, that although (as Eduard Sekler
points out above) architects may well derive the essence of
their theory of architecture from a study of architectural
history, they will presumably only do this if they derive it
from total history rather than from the forms which con-
stitute its visible photographable records. Le Corbusier con-
sidered the curve of the echinus to be "as rational as that of
a large shell." Whether the analogy was with a sea-shell
(like the ceiling at Ronchamp chapel) or-as the original
text of Vers une Architecture makes clear-with an artillery
shell, is as immaterial as the analogy with the Parthenon.
The important fact is that he was not inspired by the history
of obsolete artifacts, but by the artifacts themselves; and it is
only by emphasizing this fundamental distinction that the
appropriate character of history courses in schools of archi-
tecture can be established, and their validity assessed.
* Christ refers to it as the gateway to the park at Benouville; but
despite the omniscience associated with the author's name, there
seems no evidence that the engraved title was misspelt.
 z

0)
P-

L0
P^

0)

This content downloaded from

139.82.115.33 on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 16:31:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms