Architecture and Democracy Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VIII. IMAGINATIVE SKETCH BY HENRY P. KIRBY]

To make the whole thing clearer it may be said that Arranged and Organic architecture bear much the same relation to one another that a piano bears to a violin. A piano is an instrument that does not give forth discords if one follows the rules. A violin requires absolutely an ear--an inner rect.i.tude. It has a way of betraying the man of talent and glorifying the genius, becoming one with his body and his soul.

Of course it stands to reason that there is not always a hard and fast differentiation between these two orders of architecture, but there is one sure way by which each may be recognized and known. If the function appears to have created the form, and if everywhere the form follows the function, changing as that changes, the building is Organic; if on the contrary, "the house confines the spirit," if the building presents not a face but however beautiful a mask, it is an example of Arranged architecture.

The Gothic cathedrals of the "Heart of Europe"--now the place of Armageddon--represent the most perfect and powerful incarnation of the Organic spirit in architecture. After the decadence of mediaeval feudalism--synchronous with that of monasticism--the Arranged architecture of the Renaissance acquired the ascendant; this was coincident with the rise of humanism, when life became increasingly secular. During the post-Renaissance, or scientific period, of which the war probably marks the close, there has been a confusion of tongues; architecture has spoken only alien or dead languages, learned by rote.

But in so far as it is anything at all, aesthetically, our architecture is Arranged, so if only by the operation of the law of opposites, or alternation, we might reasonably expect the next manifestation to be Organic. There are other and better reasons, however, for such expectancy.

Organic architecture is ever a flower of the religious spirit. When the soul draws near to the surface of life, as it did in the two mystic centuries of the Middle Ages, it _organizes_ life; and architecture, along, with the other arts becomes truly creative. The informing force comes not so much _from_ man as _through_ him. After the war that spirit of brotherhood, born in the camps--as Christ was born in a manger--and bred on the battlefields and in the trenches of Europe, is likely to take on all the attributes of a new religion of humanity, prompting men to such heroisms and renunciations, exciting in them such psychic sublimations, as have characterized the great religious renewals of time past.

If this happens it is bound to write itself on s.p.a.ce in an architecture beautiful and new; one which "takes its shape and sun-color" not from the n.i.g.g.ardly mind, but from the opulent heart.

This architecture will of necessity be organic, the product not of self-a.s.sertive personalities, but the work of the "Patient Daemon"

organizing the nation into a spiritual democracy.

The author is aware that in this point of view there is little of the "scientific spirit"; but science fails to reckon with the soul.

Science advances facing backward, so what prevision can it have of a miraculous and divinely inspired future--or for the matter of that, of any future at all? The old methods and categories will no longer answer; the orderly course of evolution has been violently interrupted by the earthquake of the war; igneous action has superseded aqueous action. The cas.e.m.e.nts of the human mind look out no longer upon familiar hills and valleys, but on a stark, strange, devastated landscape, the ploughed land of some future harvest of the years.

It is the end of the Age, the _Kali Yuga_--the completion of a major cycle; but all cycles follow the same sequence: after winter, Spring; and after the Iron Age, the Golden.

The specific features of this organic, divinely inspired architecture of the Golden Age cannot of course be discerned by any one, any more than the manner in which the Great Mystery will present itself anew to consciousness. The most imaginative artist can imagine only in terms of the already-existent; he can speak only the language he has learned. If that language has been derived from mediaevalism, he will let his fancy soar after the manner of Henry Kirby, in his _Imaginative Sketches_; if on the contrary he has learned to think in terms of the cla.s.sic vernacular, Otto Rieth's _Architectur-Skizzen_ will suggest the sort of thing that he is likely to produce. Both results will be as remote as possible from future reality, for the reason that they are so near to present reality. And yet some germs of the future must be enfolded even in the present moment. The course of wisdom is to seek them neither in the old romance nor in the new rationalism, but in the subtle and ever-changing spirit of the times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IX. ARCHITECTURAL SKETCH BY OTTO RIETH]

The most modern note yet sounded in business, in diplomacy, in social life, is expressed by the phrase, "Live openly!" From every quarter, in regard to every manner of human activity, has come the cry, "Let in the light!" By a physical correspondence not the result of coincidence, but of the operation of an occult law, we have, in a very real sense, let in the light. In buildings of the latest type devoted to large uses, there has been a general abandonment of that "cellular system" of many part.i.tions which produced the pepper-box exterior, in favour of great rooms serving diverse functions lit by vast areas of gla.s.s. Although an increase of efficiency has dictated and determined these changes, this breaking down of barriers between human beings and their common sharing of the light of day in fuller measure, is a symbol of the growth of brotherhood, and the search, by the soul, for spiritual light.

Now if this fellows.h.i.+p and this quest gain volume and intensity, its physical symbols are bound to multiply and find ever more perfect forms of manifestation. So both as a practical necessity and as a symbol the most pregnant and profound, we are likely to witness in architecture the development of the House of Light, particularly as human ingenuity has made this increasingly practicable.

Gla.s.s is a product still undergoing development, as are also those devices of metal for holding it in position and making the joints weather tight. The accident and fire hazard has been largely overcome by protecting the structural parts, by the use of wire gla.s.s, and by other ingenious devices. The author has been informed on good authority that shortly before the outbreak of the war a gla.s.s had been invented abroad, and made commercially practicable, which shut out the heat rays, but admitted the light. The use of this gla.s.s would overcome the last difficulty--the equalization of temperatures--and might easily result in buildings of an entirely novel type, the approach to which is seen in the "pier and grill" style of exterior.

This is being adopted not only for commercial buildings, but for others of widely different function, on account of its manifest advantages. Ca.s.s Gilbert's admirable studio apartment at 200 West Fifty-Seventh Street, New York, is a building of this type.

In this seeking for sunlight in our cities, we will come to live on the roofs more and more--in summer in the free air, in winter under variformed shelters of gla.s.s. This tendency is already manifesting itself in those newest hotels whose roofs are gardens, convertible into skating ponds, with glazed belvideres for eating in all weathers.

Nothing but ignorance and inanition stand in the way of utilization of waste roof s.p.a.ces. People have lived on the roofs in the past, often enough, and will again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE X. RODIN STUDIOS, 200 WEST 57TH STREET, NEW YORK]

By shouldering ever upward for air and light, we have too often made of the "downtown" districts cliff-bound canyons--"granite deeps opening into granite deeps." This has been the result of no inherent necessity, but of that compet.i.tive greed whose nemesis is ever to miss the very thing it seeks. By intelligent co-operation, backed by legislation, the roads and sidewalks might be made to share the sunlight with the roofs.

This could be achieved in two ways: by stepping back the facades in successive stages--giving top lighting, terraces, and wonderful incidental effects of light and shade--or by adjusting the height of the buildings to the width of their inters.p.a.ces, making rows of tall buildings alternate with rows of low ones, with occasional fully isolated "skysc.r.a.pers" giving variety to the sky-line.

These and similar problems of city planning have been worked out theoretically with much minuteness of detail, and are known to every student of the science of cities, but very little of it all has been realized in a practical way--certainly not on this side of the water, where individual rights are held so sacred that a property owner may commit any kind of an architectural nuisance so long as he confines it to his own front yard. The strength of IS, the weakness of _should be_, conflicting interests and legislative cowardice are responsible for the highly irrational manner in which our cities have grown great.

The search for spiritual light in the midst of materialism finds unconscious symbolization in a way other than this seeking for the sun. It is in the amazing development of artificial illumination. From a purely utilitarian standpoint there is almost nothing that cannot now be accomplished with light, short of making the ether itself luminiferous. The aesthetic development of this field, however, can be said to have scarcely begun. The so recent San Francisco Exposition witnessed the first successful effort of any importance to enhance the effect of architecture by artificial illumination, and to use colored light with a view to its purely pictorial value. Though certain buildings have since been illuminated with excellent effect, it remains true that the corset, chewing-gum, beer and automobile sky signs of our Great White Ways indicate the height to which our imagination has risen in utilizing this Promethean gift in any but necessary ways. Interior lighting, except negatively, has not been dealt with from the standpoint of beauty, but of efficiency; the engineer has preempted this field to the exclusion of the artist.

All this is the result of the atrophy of that faculty to wors.h.i.+p and wonder which alone induces the mood from which the creation of beauty springs. Light we regard only as a convenience "to see things by"

instead of as the power and glory that it inherently is. Its intense and potent vibrations and the rainbow glory of its colour beat at the door of consciousness in vain. When we awaken to these things we shall organize light into a language of spontaneous emotion, just as from sound music was organized.

It is beside the purpose of this essay to attempt to trace the evolution of this new art form, made possible by modern invention, to indicate what phases it is likely to pa.s.s through on the way to what perfections, but that it is bound to add a new glory to architecture is sure. This will come about in two ways: directly, by giving color, quality, subtlety to outdoor and indoor lighting, and indirectly by educating the eye to color values, as the ear has been educated by music; thus creating a need for more color everywhere.

As light is the visible symbol of an inner radiance, so is color the sign manual of happiness, of joy. Our cities are so dun and drab in their outward aspects, by reason of the weight of care that burdens us down. We decry the happy irresponsibility of the savage, and the patient contentment of the Oriental with his lot, but both are able to achieve marvels of color in their environment beyond the compa.s.s of civilized man. The glory of mediaeval cathedral windows is a still living confutation of the belief that in those far-off times the human heart was sad. Architecture is the index of the inner life of those who produced it, and whenever it is colorful that inner life contains an inner joy.

In the coming Golden Age life will be joyous, and if it is joyous, colour will come into architecture again. Our psychological state even now, alone prevents it, for we are rich in materials and methods to make such polychromy possible. In an article in a recent number of _The Architectural Record_, Mr. Leon V. Solon, writing from an entirely different point of view, divines this tendency, and expresses the opinion that color is again renascent. This tendency is so marked, and this opinion is so shared that we may look with confidence toward a color-evolution in architectural art.

The question of the character of what may be called the ornamental mode of the architecture of the New Age is of all questions the most obscure. Evolution along the lines of the already existent does not help us here, for we are utterly without any ornamental mode from which a new and better might conceivably evolve. Nothing so betrays the spiritual bankruptcy of the end of the Iron Age as this.

The only light on this problem which we shall find, dwells in the realm of metaphysics rather than in the world of material reality.

Ornament, more than any other element of architecture, is deeply psychological, it is an externalization of an inner life. This is so true that any time-worn fragment out of the past when art was a language can usually be a.s.signed to its place and its period, so eloquent is it of a particular people and a particular time. Could we therefore detect and understand the obscure movement of consciousness in the modern world, we might gain some clue to the language it would later find.

It is clear that consciousness is moving away from its absorption in materiality because it is losing faith in materialism. Clairvoyance, psychism, the recrudescence of mysticism, of occultism--these signs of the times are straws which show which way the wind now sets, and indicate that the modern mind is beginning to find itself at home in what is called _the fourth dimension_. The phrase is used here in a different sense from that in which the mathematician uses it, but oddly enough four-dimensional geometry provides the symbols by which some of these occult and mystical ideas may be realized by the rational mind. One of the most engaging and inspiring of these ideas is that the personal self is a _projection_ on the plane of materiality of a metaphysical self, or soul, to which the personal self is related as is the shadow of an object to the object itself. Now this coincides remarkably with the idea implicit in all higher-s.p.a.ce speculation, that the figures of solid geometry are projections on a s.p.a.ce of three dimensions, of corresponding four-dimensional forms.

All ornament is in its last a.n.a.lysis geometrical--sometimes directly so, as in the system developed by the Moors. Will the psychology of the new dispensation find expression through some adaptation of four-dimensional geometry? The idea is far from absurd, by reason of the decorative quality inherent in many of the regular hypersolids of four-dimensional s.p.a.ce when projected upon solid and plane s.p.a.ce.

If this suggestion seems too fanciful, there is still recourse to the law of a.n.a.logy in finding the thing we seek. Every fresh religious impulse has always developed a symbology through which its truths are expressed and handed down. These symbols, woven into the very texture of the life of the people, are embodied by them in their ornamental mode. The sculpture of a Greek temple is a picture-book of Greek religion; the ornamentation of a Gothic cathedral is a veritable bible of the Christian faith. Almost all of the most beautiful and enduring ornaments have first been sacred symbols; the swastika, the "Eye of Buddha," the "s.h.i.+eld of David," the wheel, the lotus, and the cross.

Now that "twilight of the world" following the war perhaps will witness an _Avatara_--the coming of a World-Teacher who will rebuild on the one broad and ancient foundation that temple of Truth which the folly and ignorance of man is ever tearing down. A material counterpart of that temple will in that case afterward arise. Thus will be born the architecture of the future; and the ornament of that architecture will tell, in a new set of symbols, the story of the rejuvenation of the world.

In this previsioning of architecture after the war, the author must not be understood to mean that these things will be realized _directly_ after. Architecture, from its very nature, is the most sluggish of all the arts to respond to the natural magic of the quick-moving mind--it is Caliban, not Ariel. Following the war the nation will be for a time depleted of man-power, burdened with debt, prostrate, exhausted. But in that time of reckoning will come reflection, penitence.

"And I'll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace. What a thrice-double a.s.s Was I, to take this drunkard for a G.o.d, And wors.h.i.+p this dull fool."

With some such epilogue the curtain will descend on the great drama now approaching a close. It will be for the younger generations, the reincarnate souls of those who fell in battle, to inaugurate the work of giving expression, in deathless forms of art, to the vision of that "fairer world" glimpsed now only as by lightning, in a dream.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ESSAYS

ORNAMENT FROM MATHEMATICS

I

THE WORLD ORDER

No fact is better established than that we live in an _orderly_ universe. The truth of this the world-war may for the moment, and to the near and narrow view appear to contradict, but the sweep of human history, and the stars in their courses, show an orderliness which cannot be gainsaid.

Now of that order, _number_--that is, mathematics--is the more than symbol, it is the very thing itself. Whence this weltering tide of life arose, and whither it flows, we know not; but that it is governed by mathematical law all of our knowledge in every field confirms. Were it not so, knowledge itself would be impossible. It is because man is a counting animal that he is master over all the beasts of the earth.

Number is the tune to which all things move, and as it were make music; it is in the pulses of the blood no less than in the starred curtain of the sky. It is a necessary concomitant alike of the sharp bargain, the chemical experiment, and the fine frenzy of the poet.

Music is number made audible; architecture is number made visible; nature geometrizes not alone in her crystals, but in her most intricate arabesques.

If number be indeed the universal solvent of all forms, sounds, motions, may we not make of it the basis of a new aesthetic--a loom on which to weave patterns the like of which the world has never seen? To attempt such a thing--to base art on mathematics--argues (some one is sure to say) an entire misconception of the nature and function of art. "Art is a fountain of spontaneous emotion"--what, therefore, can it have in common with the proverbially driest, least spontaneous preoccupation of the human mind? But the above definition concludes with the a.s.sertion that this emotion reaches the soul "through various channels." The transit can be effected only through some sensuous element, some language (in the largest sense), and into this the element of number and form must inevitably enter--mathematics is "there" and cannot be thought or argued away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XI. IMAGINARY COMPOSITION: THE PORTAL]