As an introduction to architecture in general the formal textbooks
are occasionally useful. Let me commend particularly, however,
Viollet-le-Duc’s The Habitations of Man in all Ages. The archæology
and ethnology of this work are, it goes without saying, outmoded:
but for all that it has a permanent interest, and it is high time
that someone took up Viollet-le-Duc’s theme and redeveloped it in
the light of contemporary research. While I am restoring a classic,
let me add another: Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin
is disregarded nowadays, as he was in his own generation, by people
who have not yet caught up with him. His insight and unflinching
intelligence are both needed, however, and it is no longer necessary
to warn the student against his quirks and solecisms. Ruskin wrote
the apology for modernism in art when he said: “There would be hope
if we could change palsy for puerility,” and he anticipated modern
decoration when he said: “I believe the only manner of rich ornament
that is open to us is geometrical color mosaic, and that much might
result from strenuously taking up that mode of design.” For that
matter, Ruskin even predicted the architectural use of steel frames.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture closes on a prophetic word which means
far more to us today than to Ruskin’s contemporaries. “I could smile,”
he said, “when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach
of worldly science and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at
the beginning of new days. There is thunder on the horizon, as well
as dawn.” We who have seen the lightning strike may well reread these
words....
As for modern books on architecture and esthetics, let me recommend
a handful. Among them note W. R. Lethaby’s Form in Civilization.
In sharp contrast to Professor Lethaby is Geoffrey Scott’s The
Architecture of Humanism, Boston: 1914. I do not accept Mr. Scott’s
main position; but there is something to be said for it, and he says
it well. Both points of view are embraced in the distinction Mr.
Claude Bragdon makes between the Organic and the Arranged, in one of
Six Lectures on Architecture. From a limited field, Rhys Carpenter’s
Esthetic Basis of Greek Art reaches conclusions which illuminate
almost every province of esthetics. There is an able exposition of the
absolutist, mechanical point of view in Vers Une Architecture, by the
architect whose pen-name is “Le Corbusier-Saugnier.” In Speculations,
Mr. T. E. Hulme presents an interesting philosophic apology for
mechanism.