and when it does the designer is an architect, a real architect, whether he has engaged in the physical process of construction or not. But if the wall out in the open bears upon its face a representation of the mouth of a cave, the semblance of a structure which is not intrinsic in the wall, the designer is a decorator merely and not an architect. (These principles are as valid today as they were twenty to forty thousand years ago.)
The architect, that is the real architect, may be pardoned for taking an exalted view of his profession as compared with the other two which have been mentioned herein. He feels that he has imbued the practicability of the engineering structure with a spirit of beauty* a thing which in general the engineer holds in slight esteem. He, the real architect, feels that he gives decoration a permanent spiritual body rather than conjures up an evanescent image as does the mere decorator. The real architect relates engineering and architecture through the structural principle; and architecture and decoration through the aesthetic principle. The cave architect let the architectural
design of his interior slip from his fingers when he gave his entire time to sketching on the sands with a stick and left the sculptor-decorator to scratch figures on the walls of his cave. His successors of today are trying to regain lost prestige and once more make the interiors as thoroughly architectural as the exteriors; once more are they seeking to make the architectural character of interior and exterior harmonious and intrinsic in the structure. The tendency toward mere decoration, to over-elaboration is apparent in the modern architect, as it is apparent in the modern age, in which the tendency away from the natural, in the sense of the simple, toward the intricate and sophisticated is well marked.
We have become very sophisticated today ; everything is pitched in a high key. We are in a state of tension physically and spiritually, and just to the extent and only to the extent that this is so, do we in any way differ from our forebears, the cave men of from twenty to forty thousand years ago.
DOOR OF SAN JOSÉ, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS THE APPROACH TO THE DOORWAY MAY ADD LARGELY TO ITS IMPORTANCE
(From “An Architectural Pilgrimage in Old Mexico” )
The architect, that is the real architect, may be pardoned for taking an exalted view of his profession as compared with the other two which have been mentioned herein. He feels that he has imbued the practicability of the engineering structure with a spirit of beauty* a thing which in general the engineer holds in slight esteem. He, the real architect, feels that he gives decoration a permanent spiritual body rather than conjures up an evanescent image as does the mere decorator. The real architect relates engineering and architecture through the structural principle; and architecture and decoration through the aesthetic principle. The cave architect let the architectural
design of his interior slip from his fingers when he gave his entire time to sketching on the sands with a stick and left the sculptor-decorator to scratch figures on the walls of his cave. His successors of today are trying to regain lost prestige and once more make the interiors as thoroughly architectural as the exteriors; once more are they seeking to make the architectural character of interior and exterior harmonious and intrinsic in the structure. The tendency toward mere decoration, to over-elaboration is apparent in the modern architect, as it is apparent in the modern age, in which the tendency away from the natural, in the sense of the simple, toward the intricate and sophisticated is well marked.
We have become very sophisticated today ; everything is pitched in a high key. We are in a state of tension physically and spiritually, and just to the extent and only to the extent that this is so, do we in any way differ from our forebears, the cave men of from twenty to forty thousand years ago.
DOOR OF SAN JOSÉ, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS THE APPROACH TO THE DOORWAY MAY ADD LARGELY TO ITS IMPORTANCE
(From “An Architectural Pilgrimage in Old Mexico” )