a task worth trying
Last week, an interesting exchange about Regent Street in London, between John Massengale's <a href=“http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2004/06/regent_street.html”>Veritas et Venustas</a> and Peter Lindberg's <a href=“http://tesugen.com/archives/04/06/john-massengale-on-regent-street”>Tesugen.com</a>, prompted me to reach for my bookshelf and open my copy of <em>'How to Look at Buildings'</em>.
Written by the wonderfully named Darcy Bradell, it was originally printed in 1932. The copy I have is the third edition from 1945 and the inside cover tells me that it was <em>For the use of H.M. Forces</em> - it's stamps on the opening pages listing <a href=“http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/features/ace_high/index4.html”>R.A.F Ringstead</a> and <a href=“http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/h/hope_cove/”>R.A.F Hope Cove</a> as two of it's former homes in 1950 and 1957 respectively. How it came to belong to me is a bit of a mystery as I don't remember where I bought it, although I note from the price inside that it only cost £1.
I was certain that I'd find something of worth about Regent Street, but sadly it wasn't to be, there was merely a passing comment about its changing building heights being detrimental to the scale of the street. I did, however, find two other sections that snuggle up to some of my recent posts and give them a nice, friendly squeeze.
A few days ago I wrote about <a href=“http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/2004/06/15/architecture/thatbuilding”>the problem of form over program and the scaleless lump that is Selfridges in Birmingham</a>. It seems this isn't the first time the department store has landed badly on the high street.
<blockquote> Selfridge's store when it was first built threw out the scale of the whole of Oxford Street. No doubt it was a fine advertisment for Commerce in the grand manner but architecturally it was a misfit. </blockquote>
There is value in consistency I suppose. At the end of the book Bradell gets all Socratic on us and sums up what we've learnt by creating a discussion between a Mentor (us) and a Friend (them) which picks apart the design of a house they have just visited; the Mentor having no difficulty explaining to his enthusiastic Friend how he has been duped by various examples of spatial/formal clumsiness masquerading as Architecture. Dejected and beaten, Friend has little choice but to ask if Mentor thinks he could do it any better himself.
The result has a little something for everyone. Sitting neatly on the well proportioned fence, there are principles to be claimed by both sides of the debate that occurs in my <a href=“ http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/2004/05/28/architecture/schmuck”>previous entry about design codes</a> (which was written in response to <a href=“http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2004/05/the_english_new.html”>John Massengale's comments about British Architects</a>).
<blockquote> FRIEND: 'Well, I see that there's very little about this house you like. Have you any views about what you yourself would have built in its place?'
MENTOR: 'Of course I have, but I cannot be expected to give you details, only general principles. Well, first of all, I would build a house that spoke to me in terms of this century and no other. I would trust to good proportion of general mass and line, rather than to ornament or detail. But if I used detail I would see that I got some value out of it. I would put it where it could be seen and meant something to me. I would not just put it in places where other people in the past had been in the habit of doing, for that reason alone. I would build my house of permanent materials. I would see that it fitted the character of its surroundings. If they were formal ones, such as are found in most streets, then I would build a formal house. If I were in romantic surroundings on the banks of a river, or a windswept sea-shore, or in a clearing of a forest, then I would build in the romantic manner. I would try to avoid leaning too much on the Past, but I would not spurn it altogether. I would recognize that there is much to be said for the materials that man has found suitable to his use for house-building these hundreds of years and I should be chary of departing from them. I should recognize too that each has developed a technique of its own, and that I am likely to get the best results if I study the work that has been done in the past, not so that I may slavishly copy it, but rather so that I may learn the lesson that it is to be gained from it.'
FRIEND: 'You set yourself a difficult task.'
MENTOR: 'Yes, but a task worth trying.' </blockquote>
Combine this with Massengale's excellent, <a href=“http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2004/06/got_neighborhoo.html”>'Got Neighborhood?'</a>, and you'll have all the design codes you need.