One of my happier moments occurred when I purchased an absolutely mint condition Vol. I , No. 1 copy of the Architectural Record for 50 cents at a library sale. That was Sept. 1891. It's crisp, brand new, and straight from the original packing box.
The main theme of the quarterly was to reinforce the historical and high art aspirations of architecture through scholarly-like essays and to print articles on the latest advances in building materials. Wonderful reading and amazingly informative, even today. For instance, the building I now live in was built in 1927 and made heavy use of ornamental terra cotta. Although repaired from time to time, the cost of replacing broken pieces and maintaining others is very high. In the 1891 Architectural Record, there's a fascinating essay on terra cotta as a building material, complete with warnings about its limitations, especially in wet and freezing climates....as in Chicago and NYC. So why was impractical terra cotta so popular through the 1920s? One could say that architects didn't know that while the terra cotta itself was permanent, the modes of fastening it (iron clamps, motar,) and the requirement of small sizes (because it shrinks in being fired) required very expert installation and constant upkeep. Over the past several years many buildings ornamented with terra cotta have had serious problems, including falling chunks killing and maiming passerby. The city has begun a rigid inspection program that is very costly to buildings, some of which must replace whole facades of terra cotta. Maybe the architects of the 1920s never expected their terra cotta ornamented buildings to be up for 80-90 years. I really like this discussion of architecture but I do think Frances' aim for a universal theory of its necessary and sufficient conditions or practices is doomed. A style or a practice can be defined and perfected but the elusive condition of art, architecture as art, cannot be done by recipe, it cannot e done on demand. Not even Leonardo or Michelangelo could presume to make art on demand. First the work must be made and then, somehow, or never, it is said to be art. No exceptions. Ever. WC ________________________________ From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2009 2:54:26 PM Subject: RE: Architecture and Philosophy Frances to Armando... Any architectural object can be built to resemble some other object. As a sign this kind of architecture would be a formal icon of mimetic similarity, but this sort of semiotic fact need not bear any significant impact on architecture or its theory. It seems to me that architecture as a causal index of cathartic contiguity would however be more significant. If a zoo is built for example to house lions and naturally resembles their native environment and habitat, then that building is also an icon, but it is furthermore a causal index, which sheer indexicity seems to be much more important for architecture than mere iconicity; and of course out of iconicity and indexicity there may additionally emerge significant symbolicity. All architecture in any event is mainly an artifactual indicative index of only humans, because nonhuman mechanisms or organisms likely cannot usher in architectures. Indexes also entail ongoing continuity, which perhaps indicates the importance to architecture of its evolutionary history. Perhaps these few points turning on signs and humans as some key conditions for architecture might make their way into a definitive theory of architecture.
