Re: new topic

Nic M wrote:
>1.  the master-builder of the middle ages.  This doesn't work because
>calendars tell us that most monuments of pre-industrial era took over a
>lifetime to construct.  There were probably several 'master-builders' who
>worked in succession.  And these builders did not exercise creative control
>to the obssesive degree of today's professionals.  Stone carving was a
>skilled art, and the hand crafted details were probably designed as much by
>the carver as by the master builder.  The best analogy today is probably the
>project/contruction manager.

In the construction of European gothic cathedrals few details remain.  It
was an esoteric art, a collusion between masters, craftsmen and builders,
the origin of the hermetic guilds.  Masters would travel from one site to
another checking and correcting with the eye, compass and mason's square.
The masters are long forgotton, the work incomplete in their lifetimes yet
the structures remain


>
>2.  Architect as artist/design genius.  Though examples date to ancient
>times, the artist genuis model is thoroughly modern in nature.  Decorative
>building practices are an Enlightment phonomena, for all significant
>sutructures prior to this were somehow endowed by the transcedental signifier
>(god, if you will).  Only in the face of this lack of faith have we
>constructed writers, artists, etc. as individual genuises (and this has been
>a retroactive practice.  Whatever his contemporary stature, Shakespeare's
>work was considered accessible by all the theater-going public, a public more
>diverse and held in more suspicion as being morally corrupt than we would
>ever think of Shakespeare in the Park today).  And, there was more than a
>little paintile envy in the modernist heroes (Corbu, FLW, etc.)
>
>3.  re, FLW.  Let's not forget the unbridled ego of our hero-type of the
>masterbuilder.  He very much was in pursuit of social status and wealth
>previously unattainable for architects.   This is the materbuilder as
>capitalist.
Yes, in the service of capital.  I have heard this type of building called
'egotecture', 'phallotecture' and 'cathedrals to money'.

Most practices call themselves 'Associates' to disperse this view, possibly
to broaden blame.  However I believe there is a human need to have heroes,
as role models, parental figures - transitory passive influences.

>everyone I talk to who is involved in the construction industry laments the
>supposed ignornace of archtiects about 'real' building.  Well, geez, most of
>the buildings actually constructed are not designed, but yet they are damned
>ugly.  Mass production has destroyed generations of craftspeople:
>bricklayers, plasters, cabinet makers, etc (let us archi's not duck the
>blame.

I am constantly amazed by the applied richness of terraced housing in
London.  Streets and streets of 2 up 2 downs have gargoyled keystones -
each one different, stained glass in doors and outbreaks of ceramic
rossettes.

Many must have wanted and paid for these things, creating employment,
maintaining the skills base. It seems that at one time the English cared
about where and how they lived and how they built mass housing. If such
ingenuituy could be reapplied to space, energ and (infra)structural
systems, more people would be engaged with  thedesign and form of their
environmnent.

JW