On the Responsibility of the Architect

Author(s): Louis Kahn, Paul Weiss and Vincent Scully

Source: Perspecta, Vol. 2 (1953), pp. 45-57
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1566824
Accessed: 10-06-2020 14:23 UTC

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 OF ARCHITECT

In the ever-day hurry of our extroverted age, we seldom have a chance to stop to reflect upon the basic things in

life. This fact becomes clear to us in our schools, where the regular schedule of programs, criticisms and lectures

does not give the student sufficient insight into some of the fundamental principles and problems of architecture.

Thus it seemed that there was need for a time and a place where eminent architects and other prominent members of

the faculty could share with the students in an informal way their thoughts and the creative experience of their

lives. To satisfy this need, the "Studio discussions" were originated at Yale. The following text is based on the tape

recording of one of these discussions, dealing with the nature of the architect's activity, with his responsibility,

leadership and education. Some of the participants like PHILIP JOHNSON, LOUtIS KAHN, and VINCENT
SCULLY are known to our readers from previous articles in Perspecta. PIETRO BELLUSCHI was a well-known
architect in Seattle before he became, in 1951, Dean of the School of Architecture at M. I. T. Since that time he

has been able to maintain a small private practice and found time to serve as a visiting critic at Yale last spring.

PAtUL WEISS is Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Jonathan Edwards College at Yale ltniversity. He has also

taught at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Bryn Mawr. He is the author of "Reality", "Nature and Man", "Man's
Freedom", and founder and editor of the "Review of Metaphysics".

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 PERSPECTA: 2
". .. the task of processing every-day material of life
into superior aesthetic forms."
Philip Johnson: There is something that interests me al-
most as much as architecture itself and that is the moral main
spring of architecture. I don't mean good or bad morals, but
the values that we have that lead us to the design. Under
what basic living aim do we start doing architecture? I feel
that architecture is an art primarily and hardly anything else.
I probably go too far in defending this thesis that the aim of
architecture is the creation of beautiful spaces, and that
everything else is so subordinate to it that it's just as if it
didn't exist. Mr. Belluschi, I think, will make the point that
it is not abstract art like painting and sculpture; that you
have to take account of objective facts, the requirements of
the money involved, and of the structure involved. Maybe so,
but my point is that too many people are doing that already
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?
I4
and there are only a few artists who are left to do something
beyond this. This is too practical an age, and all history dis-
proves the idea that architecture is anything but an art. The
other point of view, that architecture is a technic, does count
today, because of the moral climate of our time. There is no
doubt that we believe a great deal in utility as an aim in life,
as a good, as a value. But when it gets into architecture, what
does this usefulness mean? It means little more than honesty
to express the structure ....
Pietro Belluschi: I have a quarrel with the very essence of
your statement that: "architecture must be a thing of beauty,
and secondarily of utility, because too many people already
put practicality first". To me the architect has the task of
processing every-day material of life into superior aesthetic
forms. You cannot successfully take an abstract form, and
say "I'm going to do something with this because I know it's
good." The moment you do this you defeat the very idea of
architecture, which is an attempt to give spiritual content to
the very elements which are part of the fabric of our own
living. As a caricature, I take the example of an airplane
which could be designed by an aeronautical engineer and fly
and be very beautiful. An interior decorator could also do
one which doesn't fly and yet will be very nice looking as an
abstract piece of sculpture.
Johnson: An airplane is to me much like a saw or hammer.
It's only a tool; it has nothing to do with aesthetics. A church
can be eight or 150 feet high; it makes no difference; you
can worship in both. There is always that irreducible mini-
mum. There is not an airplane that doesn't fly or a church
that doesn't work. The work business has nothing to do with
the quality of that church. It's pure art.
Belluschi: I think it is wrong to try to call architecture
what in reality is architectural sculpture. The long mistake
through the ages has been to take all the abstract pieces of
sculpture and call them architecture, their role was only ex-
ternal, not the essence, not the inside spring of architecture.
We took the Parthenon with its entablature, colonnade and
paraphernalia and said: this is architecture. This was as-
sumed to be the whole role of architecture when in truth it
was only a part, the external. There is the danger that we
may be taking forms per se, sculptural forms, I mean, as
assuming the complete role of architecture. I say it is more
than that. Architecture is space and form serving a social
purpose beyond esthetic satisfaction. The reason I contest
you is this. Architecture is not pure art, it is a social art. It
has a great many restrictions and obligations, the first of
which is to extract beauty from the very sources of our ac-
tions; it must attempt to process confusion into order. Archi-
tects not being pure artists but interpreters, must give their
minds to the general improvement of their environment,
which certainly needs improving but they cannot do it by
inventing artificial forces. The geniuses who do the research
and experimenting, the pure artists, are very few, and the
schools are not designed for them. Architecture does not
mean creating domes any more than Johnson Wax Towers.
You know that the laboratory in it does not work; it's glary
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uncomfortable and inefficient, but it's a beautiful piece of
sculpture. If we take Frank Lloyd Wright as an architect, he's
not very good; as a sculptor, he's wonderful, but look what
would happen, if all egotistical architects without genius had
their way, in our cities.
Louis Kahn: Considering a definition, Architecture is a life
emerging from inseparable aspects of mind and heart. It
has to do with the full complexity of making Architecture
work in the fullest psychological sense. It works because it is
motivated. It fills the desires and the needs. And so should
the Tower work, as a psychological satisfaction. It should
not work if it can't be used from the inside, if it's done with-
out love and integrity. The Tower was done with love and I
should say it is architecture. It belongs to Mr. Wright per-
sonally. It belongs not to the sociological aspect of architect-
ure so much as to the physics book of architecture. Archi-
tecture should start a new chain of reactions. It shouldn't just
exist for itself; it should throw out sparks to others. That is
really the judgment of a piece of art, that power. If the Tow-
er has this power to throw out sparks, to make you want to
build one of these things, then I believe it functions. If it
doesn't necessarily function as an experimental laboratory,
then Wright should be fired by the Johnson Co. The form it-
self does excite us. If you can define one building as sculpt-
ure as separated from architecture, I think there is some-
thing wrong withl both definitions. As sculpture it must be
judged from the standpoint of its being sculpture as a piece
of architecture, and if it isn't a piece of sculpture, then it
must be a poor piece of architecture. It has to satisfy the
tenets of sculpture in both cases. It's got to be a piece of
sculpture. It is a built-up type of sculpture made of small
pieces rather than of a single monolith.
Johnson: To me, a purpose is not necessary to make a
building beautiful. Naturally we have to have some labora-
tories that work. In the Middle Ages it wouldn't have been
anything, but Wright had to rationalize or Johnson wouldn't
have allowed him to build the Tower. It was the terrific
problem of a man who wants a beautiful building but the
only thing he has to build is a laboratory. Wright puts it
into a tower. It doesn't work; it doesn't have to work. Wright
had that shape conceived long before he knew what was
going into it. I claim that is where architecture starts, with
the concept.
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PERSPECTA: 2
Belluschi: That concept scares me. Do you realize what the
indirect results of that idea are? The Chrysler Buildings, the
Grand Central Buildings and finally the jukeboxes. My con-
tention is that you should not start from the outside with an
arbitrary form. To tell students that they can begin with an
abstract plastic form is dangerous.
Johnson: How can they start with anything else? You
give them a practical thing and they paste an abstract form
on it. They take it from Wright, Mies, etc., and put the form
on their own work.
Belluschi: The natural tendency of anyone is to start with
preconceived forms and then fit the functions into it. That is
just what was done in our worst periods; look at the Gothic
& Greek banks and libraries. It should be the other way
around. There should be complete understanding of all the
limitations of the problem and from that, with a great deal
of discipline, the form will emerge, little by little, and it will
be the result of both the maturity of the creative processes
which will come from it and the choice of an infinite number
of little things that you may or may not do in order to give
esthetic significance to that form. The best way to be original
for most of us is to really follow that process of thoroughly
understanding what the purpose is, not only functionally,
but also psychologically and of imparting to the work that
feeling of suspense that is really part of the creative process.
To me, the real test of a great piece of architecture is one that
will give satisfaction to the mind, as well as to the senses;
it is great if it carries conviction. I justify Corbusier and
Wright only on the fact that they are geniuses, and they are
researchers; in reality Frank Lloyd Wright has rejected to-
day's society as such, and the good that he has done has been
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in showing to the imaginative architect or student the great
potentialities of architecture as an art form. He has acted
as a catalyst, and as such he has been immensely useful. But
on a philosophical plane I would say that it is all right to
create abstract forms, but not even God can make them sur-
vive without giving them a purpose to rest on. Perhaps the
first natural act of the genius is to rebel. But we live in a
world where there are a million other people to one genius
and these people also have rights-the right for instance to
have order and beauty without having to beg for it. In other
words, it has to be carried through to all levels of society.
The results of the artist hiding in his ivory tower are seen
all around us in our dismal environment.
Johnson: You can't say that geniuses only rebel. Frank
Lloyd Wright's greatest love in the world is Sullivan and
Mies' is Behrens. They are carrying out a tradition.
Belluschi: The artist always tries to express his reactions
to the external world, so the modern architect should really
search for forms in the world that lives around him. When
you teach students to think through a problem, if they forget
the functional aspects, they will never become anything but
superficial designers.
Johnson: I would reverse everything you have said about
the process of art. There is no search, there is no research,
there is a discovery of form either here or in the air. Where
form comes from I don't know, but it has nothing at all to
do with the sociological aspects of our architecture. It does
not come from paintings. We'll fit it to our sociological
buildings, as Saarinen did to his buildings at M. I. T., and
sooner or later we will fit it so it can be used.
|B ". . . genius is to rebel."
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PERSPECTA: 2

Belluschi: The excitement of new forms is there if it's grammar, how are you going to write poetry? But putting
reached through a certain mental process. If you start with kitchens next to dining rooms is not part of it, it's awfully
a dome or a sphere and see what can be done with it, next unimportant, and so is structure. They'd have to know about
year, that sphere or dome will be passe because it never ful- brickwork, about many little things that I think are the
filled any particular desire or sequence of thought that grammar of architecture. How big is a brick, aesthetically?
would justify its existence. How does it sit? You have to learn the capabilities of that
material first, even before you can dream. If they are starting
Kahn: As you know I am constantly in the formative stage, to make forms and do architecture, then the direction is not
being influenced by very diverse things. But I think the only any longer form follows function, form follows form. Where
test of a real architect is his being an artist. I think there is do you get a shape? You don't get it from function. If you
a distinction between the professionals and the architect- don't have a conception, you'll never find a solution. Abso-
there are only a few architects and plenty of professionals. lutely, basically, it must be the artistic content.
I do not believe starting with form, necessarily, is the way
to produce architecture, but I think it's a highly strong and Kahn: The schools fail, because there isn't that element
natural way to begin. I think we all start with intuitive about them which brings out the artist, which somehow
doodles which eventually express ourselves. I know that makes the competitive feeling of art. They can't instill the
somehow I get a design suddenly. If the concept is strong, will to work in you, to discover yourself, as little as it can
the design almost falls in place. Our great trouble is to try be discovered. If a man is really an artist, he looks not with
to fare into non-existence many leftovers of ragged thinking too studious an eye at what others have done; the will is to
which leaves us with very small pieces to be fixed and that is produce something coming from the inside of you. He must
the design. I believe the concept should be equal to that of have an instrument of work; therefore, he uses whatever he
planting a seed, in which the concept, that is, the result you understands as a means, but he does not copy.
are going to get should be quite clear. As you progress and
develop, the form will be modified, and you should welcome Johnson: You don't have the mental equipment as a stud-
this, because the concept will be so strong that you cannot ent not to copy, so why disregard the originals? Frank Lloyd
destroy it. How you accomplish all this comes with the Wright shows evidence of copying in the Charnley house.
knowledge of how a thing is done, knowing the process you I think copying is the normal way.

must go through. The whole thing is a building process. It's

very different, in my opinion, from conceiving the end Kahn: I agree they probably should be copied, but I still
feel that the man who is going to be significant in his own
product and then finding a means of doing it. There is a
regular training that is necessary to do this because with right is not going to use that method. He is too impatient.
He is not as deliberate as that. There are things bubbling in
this training comes assurity. I believe you must know about
him that are completely different from any such process of
the mechanical equipment and also about your affinity for
structural members. copying. So I feel the artist looks at work fleetingly with a
certain amount of humility, with a feeling of wishing that
I do not think you two are really in disagreement at all.
he had done it, but he does not copy.
One is talking about a service which is deplorably dishonest
right now; the other speaks about the high planes which
Belluschi: The real test of discipline is to really understand
architecture must reach. Both of you certainly believe that
the many complex factors inherent in architecture. This is
the height of architecture takes the genius to accomplish.
somewhat different from the discipline that Mies extracts
from his students. He feels that instead of clipping a man's
Johnson: Then I say isn't it better to have students do imagination it really gives him a broad basis from which to
something impractical now-it's the only chance they'll have. fly after his years of discipline. I disagree mainly because I
They have time to really plow their gardens and see what have never seen anyone emerge from this successfully. If the
that seed will sprout into. I'm not ignoring discipline. If I student is a creative person, he would resent it, and if not,
were running a school, it would be far more disciplined. his wings will be clipped and he will have a difficult time
Discipline is an absolute essential. If you don't know your getting away and flying for himself.

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 I/

'~' -ll == -'--~ ~ L.....

-.... he looks not with too studious

l
". . .. he looks not w?ith too studious
!
an eye at what others hai'e done:'

The architect, unles he is first of al an artist, doesn't per- In what sense is architecture a temporal rather than a spatial
form the function that society expects of him. The prime art? There are many ways in which architecture can be
function of an architect is to be an artist, but the need is that examined temporally, but all of them should take into ac-
he should be an artist with concept flowering from the seed, count this important new attitude.
so that he wil arrive at form through a complex meeting of Let us begin with a consideration of time past. Archi-
al circumstances. The moment you relieve him of that re- tecture, particularly, is determined by the past. Almost more
sponsibility he is apt to go wrong. The prime objective of than any other enterprise it makes use of the past and tries
the architect is to understand-to order what he is doing to achieve a release from it. It seeks to achieve a present in
and be convincing of this knowledge in his final presenta- the face of and against the drag of the past. Architecture,
tion of form. more conspicuously perhaps than anything else, offers the
Paul Weiss: What evidence is there, in architecture, of the present the very meaning of the past. It shows us the past as
great change which has recently occurred in the outlook of a finished fact. Another way in which the past is relevant to
artists, philosophers, and scientists towards the idea of time? architecture is implied in the fact that architecture is a

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 temporally accumulative art. It incorporates what was done
in order to achieve it. The point can be more clearly seen
by comparing it with music. In memory the earlier notes are
retained but the notes are left behind; the last note is as
fresh and as pure, and as independent as the first. The ac-
cumulation in music, in speech, in poetry and so on is done
by man. Architecture accumulates the past in its product.
Architecture is a saving of the past; its product is the ab-
sorption of all the steps gone through in order to produce it.
To build a building you take first this brick and then that
brick and so on. Each brick remains as part of the final
result. But in music this is not true; there you have to take
the note away to be able to enjoy the next. It might thus
be said that music and poetry are more spiritual, more hu-
manistic, but that architecture is more metaphysical, for it
preserves the past in the object.
The past is one dimension of time. A second obviously
is the present. All activity is in the present. We live in the
present; though this present has a kind of stretch to it, a
stretch in which creative activity occurs. The architectural
object, you might say, is the present. You live in the present
and architecture is the dimension of your present, a spatially
defined present with a forward, a back and a side to it.
Architecture also cuts you off from the present, from the
presence of others. All products have limitations; if they be
not physical, they are psychological. Even a glass house, such
as Phillip Johnson's, still allows you to have your definition,
your limitation of place. There is a boundary to it, even
though you can see out and be seen in.
There is a third dimension to time, the very obvious
dimension of the future. Like every art form, architecture
must be produced purposefully. In architecture, this comes
out even more strikingly than in other arts, because cash is
involved; it must be carefully planned. Architecture, there-
fore, becomes most serious with respect to the future. The
complexity of an architectural work is too great to allow, as
in other forms of art, a great deal of randomness or spon-
taneity. It allows less determination to be provided in the
course of time; it is more deterministic, in that it lays out
the future more carefully. It is more restrictive than other
arts where, when you make a blunder, you still can retreat
and try again. There is another way too in which architecture
is an art of the future. It takes long to realize. The architect
is a man bothered by a more distant future than almost any-
one else.
to create art now, for now, with this prospective and this
If architecture be an art, and I think it is, it defines a
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future, a standard and an epoch. All values, thereafter, must
take their start from what has been artistically achieved. Art
defines an epoch. Some art historians tell us that such and
such is eighteenth century art, as if there were an eighteenth
century in which this art fitted. I think it goes just the other
way around. The art of the eighteenth century made the
eighteenth century be. That's why we have eighteenth century
art. This is the way architecture dates itself. It can never be
dateless because it creates the date and influences what is
going to be subsequently. The architect has, to begin with,
the future which his predecessors left for him. Every archi-
tect thus has to pay a price to his predecessors; they have in
some sense cheated him of part of the future. Every pre-
ceding architect controls part of the future, and the new
architect starts faced with this brute fact. You always have
to war not merely against the object which is taking up the
room, the spatial thing; but you have also to fight against
the object which is a kind of monument, that is the archi-
tectural object as past; the architectural object as a work of
art; and the creation of a new world. I think this is the
hardest of all tasks that the architect, or other artist, has.
What he is bothered by, unfortunately, is here and now, and
more than that, that ahead of him.
There is a sense in which all art is dated but it can be
dated badly. What is the objection to the Gothic at Yale?
Not that it is ugly but that it is stupid. It has the wrong date,
because it tries to be something other than it is. They are
modern buildings for a university that imitate ancient ones;
the buildings should have been dated as of today.
Johnson: Aren't you setting up a theory from another
world when you imply the architect has to be honest? In the
nineteenth century the most beautiful buildings thought they
were Gothic and they couldn't be further from it. If they are
fine in themselves, it makes no difference. Take for example,
H. H. Richardson. He did think for a long time that he was
doing Romanesque architecture. He liked the Middle Ages
so much he wanted to recreate it. Does this in any way
invalidate his architecture?
Weiss: His conceptual frame isn't the important thing.
What is important is what he did in the light of his own past,
the nature of his own present, and the prospective future.
If he deluded himself and thought he was in the twelfth
century, he failed to do a very important thing, which was
retrospective. Did he want to duplicate the Middle Ages or

to recreate it? If a man can say the values of the Greeks
are very important values, and that he feels they must be
brought into the present time-this I understand. But if he
is just duplicating the Greeks' period, he is doing the wrong
thing. The Greek was a man who was making his own gen-
eration, and he had to use his own past. I don't care whether
you call it dishonesty; let's use a modern existentialistic term,
it is inauthentic.
Johnson: How about Richardson's architecture? You re-
member Sever Hall, the main lecture hall at Harvard?
Weiss: The dark red brick building? Dreadful. But I
didn't know it was Richardson's architecture; I just looked which Richardson, through his Marshall Field Warehouse
at it nakedly. in Chicago giving to Sullivan a sense of form, is partially
Johnson: If you knew anything about architecture, you penings in time did create this skyscraper world which has
wouldn't call Sever Hall ugly. To me a knowledge of archi- affected you.
tecture is not a word knowledge of history but empathy with
the structure which you don't have for one of our finest
buildings.
Weiss: Maybe Mr. Richardson was a great architect; I
purely a professional matter. From the standpoint of man-
know nothing about him. But an architect too can blunder.
I remember Sever Hall as a dark place not befitting a uni-
versity, with rooms not fit for instruction. Maybe if I had
looked more carefully, I would have appreciated it. But re-
member, it is a building for a university and it belongs on
that campus as a building for instruction. And if it is as
handsome as you claim, shouldn't everybody or nearly every-
one who passes feel its power?
And if the remark I make about the nature of art in
respect to the future is correct, if you have a first-rate pro-
duction, it must maintain itself in time as does Shakespeare.
You can be ignorant of Shakespeare, and yet, if the play is
played as it should, you will be gripped and find it an ex-
citing and transforming experience. This is true of painting
and of music. Why not of architecture?
Scully: It's absolutely the opposite, especially in the modern
world. If you have an absolute dissemination of mass values
which are based mainly upon prejudice, ostentatious effects,
sex and violence, where can a Richardson fit in? And can a
Picasso fit into this system of mass communication?
Weiss: Picasso is certainly making a difference in many
dimensions, over wide areas, though not to everyone. How-
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PERSPECTA: 2
ever, architecture makes a more blunt claim, and its require-
ments in some ways are much more stringent. A play, though
not seen by so many, is seen more than is a poem or a
painting, and has more to answer to. The architectural object
presents itself to more; therefore, it should have its effects
right then and there. The cathedral does; it changes the
community. So the skyscraper does for our community, our
world; it changes that. If it doesn't do that, it has failed.
This is the point. If Mr. Richardson hasn't done this, he has
failed.
Scully: It's a question of time, of your relationship to these
things in time. If you can be changed by these skyscrapers,
responsible for, then Richardson through a chain of hap-
Weiss: This might be an illustration of an interesting dis-
tinction that professionals sometimes overlook. There are
great men in every profession who are innovators, who start
something for the profession to utilize. This, however, is
kind, these are insignificant figures. I don't mean this is
not greatness, but the greatness waits to be defined by what
is produced subsequently. It is hard to be an architect be-
cause all a building's faults are existent, all its claims are
in the present; therefore, the challenge to the architect is
greater than it is to many others. The painting is presented
to a limited audience which is prepared to be appreciative.
The architectural object offers itself to everyone whether
welcome or not. I would say, one ought to expect of any
work of art, even a sonnet, that it have this transformative
effect. In one sense, it's easier for the sonnet, in another,
harder. Easier, because people who read sonnets are in a
mood to be appreciative; harder, because it has no way of
getting to the vast body of people. Now architecture has it
easier and harder in an opposite way. Easier, because any-
one can see it; harder, in that it has to satisfy them all.
Scully: It seems to me you claim one thing for painting
and sculpture but deny it to architecture: that is the possi-
bility to grow and change. If it does grow and change, it is
two things. It is immutable and absolute-there it is; it
never changes; same stones, same spaces. But its effect on
people as generations go by does change, and therefore it
creates from itself all kinds of different, changing forms. We
53
today see different things in Richardson than did the young
McKim when he was working in his office. Architecture has
a life to be appreciated or to be ignored, the same as a
painting or piece of sculpture.
Weiss: What you are saying is absolutely sound and shows
that Richardson is a great man, because this is the meaning
of a great work of art. But do not forget that the architect
puts his result in the noses of people; therefore, he has a
responsibility the painter does not have. He must pay off
now, as well as later.
However, there are two meanings of pleasing. One is by
catering to the foolish taste of people, in which sense no one
has to please. The other sense of pleasing, where you have
actually to make a difference to the people, is the challenge.
Suppose I were a poet. Have I the right to stick on my
windows a sign saying I compose only second-rate sonnets?
No, if I say I am a poet, my claim is that I'm going to write
perfect ones. It is no excuse to say I'm just a second-rate
poet. The same is true with architecture. If you are an
architect, you have obligations. You have put your building
in the world, forcing yourself upon men; therefore, you
must pay off more rapidly than others.
There is this way in which architecture makes a claim on
and is known by all. To be sure all the arts make the same
kind of claim. But they make it at different paces, in different
ways, and at different times. The architectural object makes
a claim right now by its occupancy of space, by its use of
cash, by its obtrusive presence. It has to perform something
"time constipation" :r: .
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which the others do not. It has to perform to the m
the street. You can't say I'll wait for a sensitive so
come along and see it. You must satisfy that sensitiv
of course, but also the great architects today must see
future architectural students must see it and at the same
time, everybody else must see it. The architect must satisfy
all at the same time he satisfies the man who knows. An art
object is value embodied, an excellence. Ezra Pound's poetry
has an excellence but you must be prepared in order to be
able to appreciate it. You're not ready for it unless you do
certain things. But there is another type of excellence: poetry
that doesn't require that kind of esoteric knowledge. There
are the paintings which have a somewhat wider appeal im-
mediately and also appeal to specialists. Architecture makes
this broader and bolder claim by its very bulk, its cash de-
mands, its time-consuming demands, by the very fact that it
consumes so many man-hours of many different people. It
makes a demand which it must satisfy.
Other dimensions of architecture are certainly possible.
There are men important inside a given field, technical ex-
perts who improve the techniques. In a last analysis though,
these men are only instrumental. If you are experimenting
with the expression of wood, you are only at the preliminary
stage of architecture, because in the end you are trying to
make a building in which people can live or work.
Johnson: That's the lowest possible opinion of our art. I
think you're trying to put functional values into buildings
that don't need it. If I built a building for no purpose what-
lo
 PERSPECTA: 2

soever, it has a perfect right to be considered architecture,
good or bad. The Barcelona Pavilion, the greatest monu-
ment of modern times, has absolutely no functional purpose.
Weiss: I wonder if that is perhaps an exhibition of techni-
cal dexterity. I think it important to distinguish between
dexterity of experts in a given field and true art. For ex-
ample, there are paintings which are not beautiful but in
which you can admire the technique, the use of color or line.
These are forms of pedagogics rather than of art. If an
architect is only the precursor of "X", if you go back to
him for inspiration, it does not make him a great architect;
it makes him a pedagogue.
You have to have a definition of architecture that ap-
plies to the world in which we live, that is related to the
individual who builds, to the world in which he builds, and
space, time, money, and co-operation-you have failed badly.
The expert is like the painter who paints a cherry so well a
bird would peck at it. This is great technical skill; it is not
painting as a great art. Use in architecture is not the primary
factor, but without it something is missing. The pavilion
which defines space, which reveals the nature of space-this
could be a kind of function. It would be a form for walking
through. My original definition is evidently too narrow. Let's
try to see this on three levels. One, there is the mastery of a
technique; two, there is the mastery of the art form for liv-
ing; three, and this is apparently what the Pavilion brings
out, there is the mastery of the art form of volume such as to
give determination to the nature of space, maybe color, may-
be existence, somewhat the way in which the modern painters
are trying to get the meaning of color or of light. Then there
is not a radical difference in kind between what the modern

to all other forms of art. If you have a theory of art which architect is doing and what the old architect was doing.
in no way gears with any other form of art and other func- The modern architect has only shifted the kind of values he
tions of the age, i.e., the things I was pointing out about wants to use or give definition to.

The "Studio discussions" provoked a lively response from the student body. The following is an example of the
reaction to this discussion series. The author, BORIS PUSHKAREV, who has lived in Europe and America
and is now a fourth year student at Yale, tries to summarize some of the problems. His views, while not reflect-
ing editorial opinion, spring from his particular background, which is that of Russians actively opposing totali-
tarianism.

Through the ages of history the visual image of our man-
made environment has reflected the necessities that man
faced and the ideals to which he aspired. The scale of values
of a given society can be traced from the skyline of its cities.
Thus, the utter chaos of the majority of contemporary cities
eloquently portrays the loss of values, the abolition of ab-
solutes and the spiritual degradation under mishandled in-
dustrialism, where commercial interests and economic
materialism are allowed to dominate our field of vision,
making a virtue of vulgarity.-Reacting against this dis-
order, collectivist totalitarian systems have tried to over-
power men by a compulsory ideocratic order, which became,
in fact, the somber uniformity of a graveyard. The uncom-
pleted ruins of a Kongresshalle in Nuremberg or a Palace
of the Soviets in Moscow remind us of the failure (or the
approaching failure) of the two greatest perversions of value
in recent times.
Of course, masterpieces of architecture have been created in
our age. For the first time in two centuries a new style has
begun to emerge. But we have as yet failed to create on a
large scale an integrated environment, in which objects and
movements would be the means to express true values. In-
stead, we have often misused our ever-increasing means for
small ends.
There are many reasons for this failure. The crisis of the
contemporary mind has in many respects affected the work
of the architect. First of all, there is the relation between
concept and function.-A work of art is matter (or energy),
highly organized by spirit in a unique manner. The artist,
who vaguely sees the solution to his problem in a moment
of revelation, tries by hard work to incarnate this spiritual
vision into the necessities of material being. Thus the archi-
tect, as an artist, i.e. as somebody who deals with particular
cases and posseses freedom, is constantly dependent on the

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 scientist, i. e. somebody who deals with general cases, with
laws about necessities of matter, and has no freedom. Un-
fortunately, this dependence receives too mnuch attention
due to the general materialistic aberration of contemporary
thinking.
We have come too generally to believe that any object that
completely expresses its function is ipso facto beautiful.
Yet this esthetic law is often misinterpreted. "Function" is
too often conceived as utilitarian, the spiritual function of
objects being disregarded. For example, many designers
see no essential difference between a church and an audi-
torium, a city hall and an office building. Somewhere, most
of us have lost a sense of meaning and of the permanence of
meaning.-A friend of mine, after having heard that accord-
ing to modern standards a schoolhouse is built to last only
20 years, was horrified by this utter lack of self-respect and
exclaimed: "So you contemporary architects are just build-
ers of lean-tos to be torn down after serving one generation!"
It is often forgotten that complete unity of content and form
is an ideal that cannot be fully achieved in our earthly exis-
tence. So far, we have approached this ideal in the solution
of the easier problems. Some of the most beautiful structures
of today are bridges, highway intersections, power dams
and other tools where, way down on the scale of values, the
artist's freedom is not too much more then realized necessity,
and the product, exquisite beauty-the beatuty of mathe-
matics. The ancient times had their fortresses and aqueducts,
dictated by effective causes, but they had something else
besides, brought forth by final causes. In our day, the more
complex problems, where spiritual functions begin to loom
large next to the utilitarian remain largely unresolved and
will continue to do so, as long as modern society remains
materialist and opportunist.
Besides not yet having enough creative power to produce an
authentic symbolism of our own, besides the ideological con-
fusion and emptiness that dominates the hearts and the
brains of the average architects of today, there is the struc-
ture of contemporary society that arbitrarily limits creative
freedom even in democratic countries. Philip Johnson indi-
cated the programmatic paradox of a Frank Lloyd Wright,
who wants to build a beautiful tower, but has to squeeze in
a laboratory, so that it could be financed. There is New
York, the biggest city in the world, still without a general
plan due to the resistance of our money economy; its two
biggest residential developments-Stuyvesant Town and
Levittown-built for profit, not for man. It seems that the
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architect, if employed, still has usually to be a servant of
real estate interests, instead of vice versa.
The other limitation of creative freedom is the taste of the
so-called common man. We are being told that those visually
painful miles of pseudo-colonial-ranch-style houses on Long
Island and the ugly furniture in department stores are what
the public demands. The New York Times published some
time ago an interview with former residents of the U. N. site
in New York. All of them bitterly complained that the old
slums had gone; only one seemed vaguely to appreciate the
new setting. It somehow seldom occurs to the eminent archi-
tects of today that it is up to them to take the initiative and
shape the taste of the majority, lest it be shaped, as it is, by
incompetents and by prejudice.
The architect is the creator of the man-made environment,
and as such he is responsible for the way in which it will in-
fluence the growth of human beings. Thus the sculptor of
buildings becomes simultaneously a co-sculptor of human
souls, an educator and a prophet, and therein lies the source
of his importance and responsibility. At present, this is not
a statement of fact, but of task.
The task can be solved, when artists like the architect, the
designer, the planner will have the full material support of
their community, and will be recognized as the only per-
sons competent to shape the physical environment (provided,
of course, that they possess the necessary scientific data).
The task can be solved, when their community becomes an
integrated whole, consciously cooperating in service to ideals.
Totalitarianism has tried to achieve these aims by violence.
It gave to society and to artists a compulsory, arbitrary creed
as a condition of material support. It succeeded only in
crippling art, society, and the human person. A compro-
mise-necessarily temporary-between liberalism and to-
talitarianism-such as censorship of architecture-obviously
cannot be the solution either.
The solution lies in extending freedom beyond its present
limitations to make it, instead of the aimless "freedom from"
as an end in itself, a responsible "freedom for," the necessary
means for man to fulfill his destiny. This fulfillment lies not
in a selfish satisfaction of the ego, but in creative service
to objective, superpersonal values (among them the good,
the beautiful and the true), and to one's fellow men.
Therefore, it would seem that the function of society and
government should be not only to guarantee the security of
their citizens, but also to strive to provide the best possible
conditions for creative service and inner growth of every

single person. Overcoming harmful tendencies not so much
by means of compulsion, but primarily by awakening and
stimulating healthy tendencies would be a basic feature of
such a society. This educational task is obviously not the
business of government, but of independent professional
bodies, competent in the given field and backed by private
and public funds. A new society and a new way of life can
be created only by a slow process of education-by which
is meant not "conditioning", not the creation of mass atti-
tudes, but encouraging each person to work out for himself
a meaningful interpretaton of reality. The recognition of the
objective character of Truth and, at the same time, of the
right to heresy seems to provide a frame for the realization
of unity within diversity. This, together with the concept
of service will help to solve the psychological problem of
making the "average man" feel a meaningful part of the
free community.
Thus the social obligation of the architect is expressed not
only in the structures he builds, but in the whole of his life.
One of the tragedies of our time is the divorce between in-
tellect and will, between morality and faith. Many highly
intelligent people have not found within themselves the pow-
er to act, and have looked on impotently while strong men
with evil wills made history. One-sided specialization always
leads into evolutional blind-alleys. The architect, like every-
body else, lives simultaneously his professional life, his fami-
ly life, the life of his community and his inner, spiritual life.
He has to succeed simultaneously in all of these, if he wants
to be a whole man. To be a thinker is an absolutely neces-
sary yet insufficient condition. Only those, who have the
strength also to wish, to dare, and to act will be able to
Copyright 1953,
PERSPECTA, The Yale Architectural Journal.
The entire contents of Perspecta,
The Yale Architectural Journal-text and illustrations-
are protected by copyright.
All rights reserved.
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PERSPECTA: 2
wring influence from incompetents and charlatans and create
a new psychological climate, where the creative man will be
respected. For the "majority" does not choose just anybody
it wants, but those who become eminent due to their power.
The justification of the new elite will be service-not only
to the absolute being and to intrinisic values directly, but
also to the non-absolute, yet basic value: the human person.
For values are immanent to the person ("the kingdom is
within you"). The architect will build with the human per-
son constantly in mind.
These norms do not apply to a distant future-they have to
be embodied in life now, if an active minority has to begin
the task of rebuilding the world we live in-rebuilding it
simultaneously through spiritual rebirth and reorganization
of social patterns. The overwhelming technological advance
urgently demands a bridge over the current gap between our
lagging spiritual culture and our technological civilization.
The time will come, when the current race toward quanti-
tative achievements will necessarily slow down; the lost sense
of wholeness will be manifest to men. Religion will cease to
be one of so many self-contained compartments of life, but
will take the central place in a community, where every step
in any domain of life-including architecture-will be,
ideally, a conscious step towards God.
An ideal of culture has to be difficult and high, in order to
strain all the spiritual forces of men. With new aims and a
new structure of society, architects will find new inspiration
and new possibilities. These will enable them to build a truly
functional environment which will represent genuine values
and in which great means will be used to achieve great ends.
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