Architecture as an Art

Heinrich von Geymüller, an architect and a great historian of architecture, once made the remark: “As little as Man lives by bread alone, does Architecture live by construction alone.”2 With these words he opposed a number of notions, the influence of which he considered as fatal for the future of architecture, notions which essentially stem from one and the same ground. The first of them is founded on the obvious advance of technical skill in our age, of which the introduction of steel construction in architecture is perhaps the main feature. It is the conviction that command of the science of construction is all that an architect needs to create architecture, good architecture. The second notion regards the role of architecture in Life. A disillusioned age, our time stresses more and more the purely practical ends of building. Usability has become the paramount criterion of judgment in regard to architecture. These notions filter into the evaluation of the history of architecture in a curious fashion. Gothic architecture, for example, is idolized as the principal example of architecture created entirely from a consideration of technical problems, while a number of other styles of architecture, because they are suspected of sinning against so-called laws of construction and of indulging in unnecessary fancy, are condemned as false, insincere, and—inartistic. Thus, the role of imagination as a determining force in the creation of architecture seems to be in question. Yet, there still are those who do not want to dispense with the imaginative side of architecture; but they are told that it is divorced from construction and usefulness (“function”), and they find themselves holding on to something which seems a mere plaything, and which is becoming more and more meaningless.