Journal of Architectural Education

ISSN: 1046-4883 (Print) 1531-314X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjae20

The Anticipation of Order

Joseph Hudnut

To cite this article: Joseph Hudnut (1958) The Anticipation of Order, Journal of Architectural
Education, 13:2, 21-25, DOI: 10.1080/10464883.1958.11102391

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1958.11102391

Published online: 22 May 2015.

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both may build abominations but the consumer can choose
the abomination he least abominates. You may, if you like,
say that consumers are at the mercy of entrepreneurs; it is
equally true that the entrepreneur is at the consumer's mercy,
for from the standpoint of the entrepreneur the consumer is
a wild and irresponsible beast. For twenty years consumers
have shown an insatiable appetite for chrome embellish-
ments on automobiles, which producers have satisfied by
adding more and more chrome; then suddenly the con-
sumer acts as though he didn't like chrome work at all. The
entrepreneur feelslike a Greek who worships his gods faith-
fully only to fmd that the gods have turned against him. I
think it is terribly difficult really to feel any less sympathy
for the poor entrepreneur than for the customer.
All this helps explain how it happens that millions of
Americans live in ugly or at the best, tasteless houses. One
is inclined to say that they deserve exactly what they have.
But on the other hand it is very hard to see how within our
system they could have had anything substantially better at
that moment. The entrepreneur in this sort ofsituation stays
alive by guessing as well as he can what he will be able to
sell, and to the extent especially that he is in competition
with others he is under a very compelling need to do the
best he can. But the best may not be very good.
Now those are just a few of the ways in which the
underlying economic, social, and political organization of
the United States has affected architecture in this country.
I think it shallow to complain about American taste as such,
while ignoring economic causeswhich determine the actual
consumption pattern. I revert to my statement at the very
beginning, that this is not intended and ought not to be con-
strued as economic determinism. Moreover, it is possible to
change the underlying conditions. And I think that is very
near the surface, implicitly, in what many architects have at
various times said. I think they were really complaining less
of the condition of public taste than of the whole social and
economic organization of the U. S. I think what they were
saying was that a liberal democracy is not apt to build build-
ings of any great accomplishment, and that a benevolent
dictator with an advanced degree in architecture from a
good university would really produce a community which
was much more beautiful to look at. It may be true, though
I doubt it.
But if architects and the arbiters of taste really pro-
pose to institute a benevolent dictatorship, they ought to be
quite frank in recognizing what they really mean. Perhaps
they would then ask themselves seriously whether the gains
in civic beauty-the doubtful, conjectural gains-are worth
buying at the price ofliberal democracy.
It is possible within a liberal democracy to do some-
The Anticipation of Order 21
thing by way ofeducation, but given the underlying condi-
tions I think every realistic expectation about the effect of
education would have to be that it takes a very long time
indeed, and runs the danger that just when everyone is fi-
nally educated to 'better taste' the architects will discover
that it wasn't a better taste at all. I think really the implica-
tion of our form of political and social organization is that
there is very, very little that can be done, and that it takes a
great deal of time to do it. For that reason, although I have a
great deal of sympathy with all those dedicated and noble
men who feel that architecture has a social content and that
the profession of architect carries with it a social responsibil-
ity, my sympathy is tempered by a real pessimism as to how
far that social responsibility in its exercise can radically im-
prove the situation. On this dismal note I return the subject
to those ofyou who are qualified to speak ofit.
The Anticipation
of Order
Joseph Hudnut
At some personal risk I am go-
ing to make some comments on that perplexing activity
which in schools ofarchitecture is called design.
Note, please, that I intend to speak of design as an
activity: a way ofdoing and making, a verb and not a noun.
Not, for example, as in The design for a schoolhouse but in
I amgoing todesign aschoolhouse.
Design is the anticipation of order: the act of fore-
seeing and preparing for order. The teaching of design is an
art intended to encourage in students an aptitude for that
foresight and preparation.
There is order in objects made by man when each
part of such an object is consistent with all other parts and
all go together to form a coherent unity.
Order in architecture is made up of several kinds of
order. There is of course only one comprehensive order-
the order of the whqle-s-but we may, for the sake of clarity
in discussion, break this general order into categories and
speak of each separately. But when we do this we must be
careful not to imply that these orders exist apart from the
22 The Journal of Architectural Education
others. Almost all of the confusion and controversy in ar-
chitectural criticism arisesfrom such a separatism.
I am going to discuss, more or less independently,
three orders in architecture-but please do not believe that
I am unaware oftheir essentialunity. My purpose is to relate
three kinds, or types, of order to three kinds, or types, of
teaching. It appears that in our teaching of design we are al-
ways stressing one or another kind of order. To teach all
kinds at once is to create a buzzing confusion. We have,
therefore, systems of presentation and of criticism. I am as
much concerned with such systems of presentation as with
systems oforder. I hope in fact to identify these.
Cognitiveorder is that order which is created by anal-
ysis and synthesis and apprehended through knowledge. It
is that order which rests on practical, economic, social, or
technological factors.
Aesthetic order is that order which is created by the
visual imagination and apprehended through perception.
It is that order which rests upon contemplative satisfactions,
or values, into which cognitive values enter only as con-
tributory factors.
Expressive order is that order which is created from
the feelings, or emotional responses, associated with cogni-
tive or aesthetic order. It rests upon the ability of the artist
to convey in plastic form the emotional content ofhis theme
-and upon the receptivity ofspectators.
The study of these kinds of order belongs in that
sphere of speculative thought called aesthetics-a subject
never mentioned in schools ofarchitecture.
Cognitive, or Reasoned, Order
In architectural design cognitive order begins with
an analysis offunctional requirements. From such an analy-
sis there is developed a program: the uses of the proposed
building set down in terms of enclosed or open space, the
proper relationships among these spaces, the structures en-
closing space, the limitations or opportunities of the site, and
the economic and socialcircumstances relevant to the whole.
The completed building will be the realization of such a
program.
Between the program and this realization lies the
plan. A plan is essentially cognitive data set down in line or
shadow-an abstract projection in two dimensions of three-
dimensional elements. A plan is a convention intended to
give coherence and intelligibility to the analysis of the pro-
gram.
No one, of course, expects to build a building pre-
cisely according to a plan thus conceived and developed.
Aesthetic and expressive necessities enter into the process of
planning almost from its inception. Our minds are not so
compartmentalized as to prohibit such admixtures. Never-
theless planning in its first stages-and especially in schools
of architecture-is a mode of intellectual analysis and syn-
thesis. As teachers we are first concerned with an effort to
make our students think (having taught them in basic de-
sign not to think) and to make them think is in itself a vic-
tory ofour art.
A plan implies a grouping of shapes. In the schools
these are necessarily phantom shapes. Their peculiar charac-
ter and dimension exist only in the mind. On the plan they
appear as symbols arranged in a diagram-like the symbols
and ethereal diagrams of mathematics. Their conception
and their patterning are intellectual exercises. This will be
true even at that moment when in the development of the
design these shapes make their appearance as elements in a
model or perspective drawing. They may become plastic
phenomena-but they are not sculpture.
It is usually at this time that the student consciously
turns to the realization of an order beyond that of ordered
thought. He will try to bring some visual harmony into the
objects represented on his drawing board and into their re-
lationships with each other and with the site.
Suppose, for example, that the student is designing a
high school. He will now have at his disposal a variety of
ghostly shapes representing assembly rooms, classrooms, a
cafeteria, a library, a gymnasium.... He will have indicated
a logical (he means practical) arrangement of these. He has
created a grouping, a collection of images set down side by
side. What other order is now possible?What aesthetic ideas
or felt relationships may now enter here? Alas, the moment
for these has been left behind-except, of course, as they
may have sneaked in, uninvited, from the subconscious
mind. Aesthetic idea begins with a plastic unity; against its
advent stands the invincible army of common sense. There
is left only streamlining, inventions in fenestration, pilotti,
balconies, lettering, and enamel panels-thrown at the walls
in a vain attempt to soften their harsh angularities.
The sequence of idea and method thus established is
often defended as a proper preparation for practice. It is sup-
posed to represent in academic form the architect's way of
working. More accurately, I think, the draftsman's way of
working: nothing is more annoying to an architect than a
draftsman who has aesthetic ideas. (For that purpose archi-
tects have a style department.) Besides, this approach to
architecture is fully understandable to the executive mind.
That is very important in universities.
Of course, I know that fitness is a genuine source of
satisfaction in buildings and no one will deny that cognitive
order is a genuine value. Airplanes are rightly valued for the
way in which they announce their fitness for flight no less

than for the way in which they carry with them the imag-
inings which surround their beautiful wonder. They are
made rhythmical also by lines and proportions which are in
part the consequences of necessities. And we all know that
buildings also may attain that quality of beauty through the
development oftheir utilitarian shapes.
But this is quite a different process ofdesign than that
which gives every precedence to things that are practical
and invites beauty with little more than last-minute trim-
mings. That will be true even when the trimmings are in
themselves beautiful.
Such a process does not encourage a just understand-
ing ofvalues in architecture.
Aesthetic, or Visual, Order
The basis of aesthetic order-a perceived order often
apprehended without the mediation of knowledge-is
rhythm: in architecture a rhythm evoked by structure and
space when these attain a plastic unity.
Students often complete their education in architec-
ture without any genuine experience ofplastic unity. Archi-
tecture, which is no longer a matter of historical styles laid
over modern structure, is conceived as a newly-invented
style, as irrelevantly attached to newly-invented surfaces.
When students habitually think ofarchitecture in that man-
ner there is little hope that they may become architects.
In his famous essay The Dehumanization of Art, Or-
tega y Gasset illustrates the two kinds of order, cognitive
and aesthetic, by a description of a garden seen through a
window. We do not see the window-only the shrubs and
the flowers. But suppose we fix our attention on the trans-
parent pane. We then lose sight of the garden and see only
a pattern ofcolor which seems fixed to the glass.
We may imagine a painting as such a window. The
average person (I do not know who that may be) sees in
Titian only his opulent goddesses, noble heroes, devout
saints, and the warm splendor of his landscapes. These are
the garden forms seen through the window. The average
person does not see, between him and the things represent-
ed, the subtle pattern ofTitian's line and color. The aesthetic
order escapeshim. And, ofcourse, we know that this is why
the modern painter reduces his representational elements to
a minimum and lays over them an order drawn from an
unseen realm.
Functional shapes play in architecture the role played
by goddesses and saints in Titian. When our attention is
focused upon functional shapes we become unaware of the
art in architecture. (But the analogy is not precise. ]Ie must
not forget the social relevance which gives importance to
The Anticipation eif Order 23
architecture. There is happily no way in which architecture
can be dehumanized.)
Admitting the necessity of a programmatical ap-
proach to design, can we in any way modify this approach
in such a way as to overcome its retarding influence on the
education of a student's aptitudes for aesthetic order? We
have made an excellent beginning by the introduction of
courses in basic design; but the disciplines of these courses
are seldom carried through into the courses in architectural
design. They do not contest the mind of the student with
the more urgent demands ofhis programs. The ideas learned
in basic design are stored away as something to be added on
to functional shapes at an appropriate moment. They sel-
dom lie at the heart ofa student's endeavor.
If I had my way every program in architectural de-
sign should be so presented as to imply the primacy of aes-
thetic order. This should especially be our concern in the
case of programs presented in the first year of architectural
design. The student who in basic design has learned to ap-
prehend and value aesthetic order ought to find that experi-
ence enriched and deepened in the year that follows and
made immediately consonant with the themes of architec-
ture. Do not ask him to design a warehouse-or (Heaven
forbid) a housing project.
There were many faults in the Beaux-Arts system of
teaching and yet that system never failed to imply the sov-
ereignty ofart in architecture.
Take, for example, that program issued each year at
the first meeting of the freshman class: 'A rich and eccentric
old gentleman finds himself in possession of four antique
columns .... He decides to build a museum .... He requires
a large room for sculptures and two smaller rooms, ofequal
size, for objets d'art. . . .'
With that crutch to our imaginations how we let
ourselves go, our hearts unwithered by any doubt of the
meaning ofarchitecture!
We need a modern equivalent ofthat rich, eccentric,
provocative, kindly, non-functional, inorganic, and inspir-
ing old gentleman.
The first projects in architecture might be of such a
nature as to continue some special investigation made in
basic design. The student has, let us say, gained some experi-
ence ofspace as an element in aesthetic order. Let him begin
his study of architecture, then, with problems which em-
phasize the role of space: the ordering of space and its rela-
tivity to enclosing fabrics. The living room of a country
house, for example; a banking room (not necessarily the
Manufacturers Trust); and then sequences of space such as
the dining room and reception room in a hotel; the nave
and sanctuary ofa church.
24 TheJournal ofArchitectural Education
Perhaps the student has also gained some experience
in sculptural form. Le Corbusier once defined architecture
as 'the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses
brought together in the light'. He has recently returned to
that premise; perhaps it will be again fashionable. It is not
essential that he, or our students, should base their art on so
circumscribed a principle-and yet it would be unfortunate
if our students do not early in their studies encounter mon-
umental form. Alberti defined excellence in architecture as
plastic synthesis. He is not so'old hat' as many suppose.
It may also be assumed that the student has made
some experiments in the aesthetic resources of materials.
He should continue these experiments in the design of
buildings. I would not have him begin his design with aes-
thetic surface and yet I would have his program and his
method so contrived as to make him from the beginning
aware of envelope and texture (not necessarily from the
office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill): 'A rich and ec-
centric old trust company finds itself in possessionof twelve
acres ofplate glass.... It decides to build a bank. .. .'
Preposterous! There should be (and usually is) an
element of the preposterous in every fine work of architec-
ture. Perhaps that is why we do not despair ofour students.
Carlo Lodoli, who is the father of German function-
alism, would allow his students to admit to their designs
only that 'which originated in the strictest necessity'. They
must therefore reject all ornament, all enrichment of sur-
face, all that is consciously aesthetic. Teaching in the splen-
dor of eighteenth-century Venice he would have torn from
the walls of palace and piazza every inch of their colored
and chiseled incrustations. Palace and piazza should then be-
come 'honest and reasonable'.
I am glad that Lodoli did not have his way; and to
prevent a similar catastrophe in our cities I suggest that our
students might temper their designs with a few pinches of
wholesome dishonesty and unreason.
Expressive, or Felt, Order
I like to believe that there is in theprocesses of design a
third kind oforder-other than cognitive order and aesthetic
order-with which our students ought to have some guided
experience. I relate this order, whose elements are states of
mind, feelings, and sensitivities,not to reason or perception
(although they are not separate from these) but to meanings
inherent in forms and intuitively apprehended. There is an
emotional content in every building and although I know
that to an observer this content has its source in relativities
and associations, I believe, nevertheless, that it may be in
part subject to the control of an architect and may therefore
have an order and development, ethereal, and having only
a psychological reality.
Architecture pressestoo closely upon human life not
to be charged with an infinity of human reactions. Archi-
tecture is always dynamic, always dramatic. Architecture
expresses: makes known. It expresses, not circumstance
merely, not the nature of its materials merely, not use and
pleasure merely, but the secret hearts ofthose who create it.
Weare sometimes told that the expressive character
of buildings, although not beyond the appreciation of
young men and women, liesbeyond their capacity ofattain-
ment. They lack that experience oflife from which arises a
grasp ofemotional content in art, nor can we hope that they
might command an utterance of that content in the difficult
shapes of buildings.
I do believe that many young men-and many old
men-are incapable of expression in the languages of the
arts; but that incapacity does not arise from youthfulness.
Our students are not children unendowed by sensibilities
and insight. I have taught the history of architecture too
many years to believe that they do not respond to the seren-
ity ofAthens, the grandeur ofVersailles, the exciting drama
of the baroque in Spain. And there are many sparks from
these altars in the studios ofdesign.
It seems to me that no architecture in history was
more latent with emotional power than is modern architec-
ture, an art addressed to nothing lessthan the reconstruction
of society. The very austerity of our buildings is a kind of
Puritan passion; and that vision of a new world and that
deep sense of human worth are the excellent springs of ar-
chitecture. Students who have tasted these springs are not
too young to attempt an expression in their designs.
They should make that attempt even though it will
often lead to absurdities, for it is only in that way that they
will form ajust understanding ofthose human values which
lift architecture out of the dull air of necessity. They should
look constantly for meanings in things made by man and
know the importance of sympathy and feeling in every
rhythm oflife. They should learn to recognize foreshadow-
ings of the strange, the ideal, and the infinite in things that
are familiar and finite.
We are asking too much of our students! Precisely.
We must ask too much ofthem.
Cognitive, Aesthetic, andExpressive Order
Design is the anticipation of order. Order may be
made up ofknown elements brought together in accordance
with reasonable laws. Order may be made up of perceived
elements brought together in an observed unity. Order may
be made up of elements having their home in the imagina-

tion and brought together by the imagination. And all these
orders are parts ofone order in which they are intermingled.
I shall illustrate these relationships with some familiar
linesfrom a poem by William Blake-although I know that
analogies which cross the frontiers of the arts are sometimes
treacherous:
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry:
Observe now the three orders:
(a) The factual, known order: the tiger in the dark
forest.
(b) The aesthetic order: the rhythmical, dynamic
words in which the image is enveloped.
(c) The expressive order: into the image and the
musicallanguage there is fused the mystery of human origin
and destiny.
Know
Thomas Biggs
the Client
It is probably useful to you that
views expressed today have a diversity; architects are not
standardized products and each of us, of course, is varied as
our experiences and environments vary. Working and liv-
ing in Mississippi, which, I understand, ranks forty-eighth on
anumber ofeconomic and cultural lists,does leave a different
kind of mark. Architecturally, and other ways as well, you
might regard it as a frontier and requiring yeomanlike ef-
fort. I tell you these things only so that you will understand
the source ofcoloration ofmy opinions.
The opinions of the people with whom we deal, our
clients, also have coloration and occasionally are prejudiced
to an extent, as I have observed. Some young men in the
profession regard them as the prime villains in the whole
architectural plot. I suggest to you, however, that what ini-
tially appears as client prejudice, from our point of view,
can often, through exploration, be the means whereby we
gainin depth ofunderstanding and enrichment ofsolutions.
Know the Client 2S
Vi Hudnut was remarking on an old Beaux-Arts program
for 'an eccentric and rich old gentleman'. Note the inclu-
sion of personality as a part of the problem, and I venture
that dealing with his 'eccentric and rich old gentleman'
would have been a delightful experience. On the other
hand, I can visualizeone ofour young men, highly and com-
petently trained in objectively analyzing the needs for hous-
ing the museum pieces,proposing a type ofuniversal build-
ing with its display advantages of setting, contrast, and so
on. Also, I can visualize the probable explosion on the part
of the old gentleman when he learns there is no room or
setting for his eccentricity. You see, he is prouder of his ec-
centricity than he is ofhis antique columns.
And so, personalities and their differences are prime
delineators of the arena within which we work, and on this
working level-what do we do about it:
As an initial move we undertake to establish maxi-
mum overlap ofexperience. Ifwe are successful, in the final
product we should find a measure of Hudnut's Expressive
Order, expressing to an appropriate degree a fusion of per-
sonalities, client, and architect.
But, our young man says, you have chosen a ridicu-
lous and extreme example to make a point which is not
valid. Further, he says, the princes are dead and we deal
mostly with corporate bodies and boards of trustees in the
democratic tradition. Checks and balances hold in such a
manner that eccentricity is not permitted.
Rest assured ofthis: somewhere along the line as our
young man threads his way through the maze of this board
or that body he will run up against the dominant personality,
the man who makes things go, and he is the one who will
leave the impress ofhis personality on our building.
I don't want to belabor this point any longer, and
certainly I don't suggest that you teachers of architecture
start assuming eccentric postures. However, dealing in per-
sonalities is a substantial part of the architectural problem;
approached positively it offers enriching opportunity, and I
recommend, by some means or other, student exposure to
its ramifications.
The Larger Overlay
You know, strange and unforeseen things happen to
buildings as they go through their lives, particularly the
programmatic types. Ownership changes, there are altera-
tions and additions, pushings and pullings, things we have
no control over and which we could not predict. That re-
filled detail we sweated over is roughly removed to be re-
placed with who knows what: Does that suggest the need
for some larger overlay: One less likely to be destroyed:
An overlay that will easethese wounds when they occur: