The American Architect
The ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW
VOL. CXXIVWEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1923NUMBER 2123
DAYLIGHT in BUILDINGS
BY PERCY E. NOBBS, M. A.
A
RCHITECTURE may be regarded in many ways all equally truistic; for tbe present purpose it is to be considered as tbe
apt of assembling and arranging the diverse Reductions which are the concern of the lesser arts and crafts, in such ways as may result in distinctive occularly perceived impressions.
In the internal structure of a building more trades, arts, call them what you will, are as a rule involved than on the exterior, where wall materials, —stone or its substitutes — window materials,—glass in frames of wood or metal— and roof material,— sheets of metal, mineral or makeshifts for these—are all but exhaustive of the list and consequently of the techniques. But in the interior, choice of means to our ends is vastly freer and the combinations infinite.
In exercising our selective tastes as masters of every trade we architects may be influenced by a connoisseurship of ancient ways of doing things; by a conscious loyalty to a tradition, national, or cultural; by an
exalted self-sufficiency of inventiveness; by a spirit of willing compromise with the idiosyncrasies of our clients, or by a clear perception of the fundamentals of problems as problems ;—by all and any of these and by a hundred
other sentiments. Yet whatever the light and shade of our motives in the resultant assemblage of material made eloquent through form and color (whether in being, or only potentially set forth in drawings, specifications contracts and purchase lists), the revelation of aesthetic content, if any, depends on eyes to see with and light to see by.
So we find that ultimately the value of the arrangement of parts and things is conditioned by the arrangement of the windows. These have a dominating importance not only in virtue of their own inherent uses, but as affecting every other internal element of a structure in its architectural, as distinct from its engineering, aspect.
Mere efficient planning is a matter of engineering talent— synthesis of use, prospect, aspect, construction. But planning may be art as well as engineering and without detriment to efficiency in virtue of inherent graces of solution. Our mathematical friends assure us that their problems have solutions in mere mathematics and, by virtue of grace, solutions in purest poetry But the grace of solution of plan is of a rather superficial kind if it result only in pattern on a drawing, and in inanity of occular impression in the executed work. In these days of academic teaching
Staircase, 24 Friedrich-Karl-Ufer, Berlin
(Copyright, 1923, The Architectural & Building Press Inc.)
The ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW
VOL. CXXIVWEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1923NUMBER 2123
DAYLIGHT in BUILDINGS
BY PERCY E. NOBBS, M. A.
A
RCHITECTURE may be regarded in many ways all equally truistic; for tbe present purpose it is to be considered as tbe
apt of assembling and arranging the diverse Reductions which are the concern of the lesser arts and crafts, in such ways as may result in distinctive occularly perceived impressions.
In the internal structure of a building more trades, arts, call them what you will, are as a rule involved than on the exterior, where wall materials, —stone or its substitutes — window materials,—glass in frames of wood or metal— and roof material,— sheets of metal, mineral or makeshifts for these—are all but exhaustive of the list and consequently of the techniques. But in the interior, choice of means to our ends is vastly freer and the combinations infinite.
In exercising our selective tastes as masters of every trade we architects may be influenced by a connoisseurship of ancient ways of doing things; by a conscious loyalty to a tradition, national, or cultural; by an
exalted self-sufficiency of inventiveness; by a spirit of willing compromise with the idiosyncrasies of our clients, or by a clear perception of the fundamentals of problems as problems ;—by all and any of these and by a hundred
other sentiments. Yet whatever the light and shade of our motives in the resultant assemblage of material made eloquent through form and color (whether in being, or only potentially set forth in drawings, specifications contracts and purchase lists), the revelation of aesthetic content, if any, depends on eyes to see with and light to see by.
So we find that ultimately the value of the arrangement of parts and things is conditioned by the arrangement of the windows. These have a dominating importance not only in virtue of their own inherent uses, but as affecting every other internal element of a structure in its architectural, as distinct from its engineering, aspect.
Mere efficient planning is a matter of engineering talent— synthesis of use, prospect, aspect, construction. But planning may be art as well as engineering and without detriment to efficiency in virtue of inherent graces of solution. Our mathematical friends assure us that their problems have solutions in mere mathematics and, by virtue of grace, solutions in purest poetry But the grace of solution of plan is of a rather superficial kind if it result only in pattern on a drawing, and in inanity of occular impression in the executed work. In these days of academic teaching
Staircase, 24 Friedrich-Karl-Ufer, Berlin
(Copyright, 1923, The Architectural & Building Press Inc.)