New York's Bryant Park - The Holiday Shops

I was lucky enough to travel with my family to New York City recently and experience the wonderful temporary Holiday Shops and skating rink set up in Bryant Park for the winter.  This is a marvelous example of the use of pop-up retail to transform an already exquisitely designed public space into a magical place for the holiday season.  The small shop pavilions are arranged to form a cozy network of pedestrian passages like those found in traditional European Christmas markets.

Summary Part 2: Individuality and Continuity - Architectural Composition by John Beverley Robinson

This post continues our several part series summarizing the classic book Architectural Composition, 1908 by John Beverley Robinson.  The previous post discussed the design characteristic that Robinson considered most essential: unity.

Robinson continues his discussion of form by examining the two main sorts of shapes in architectural composition which correspond to opposite sentiments: individual and continuous. 

The Boston Public Library and the Old South Church on Boston's Copley Square are respectively exquisite examples of the expression of continuity and individuality (2009).

Individuality:

Buildings where the height is greater than the width lend themselves to individual treatment.  They command attention and stand out as focal.  In the absence of concentration, there is no individuality.  Pyramidal and pointed forms generally express the most striking individuality. Pyramids possess individuality because all lines trend to a single point.  After the pyramid, the tower has the most individuality.

The vertical treatment and tower of this Art Deco building in San Antonio, TX express individuality (2008). 

Continuity:

Unity doesn't require individuality; it can be achieved with continuity.  Buildings in which width is greater than height lend themselves to continuous treatment.  Buildings whose primary expression is continuity tend to recede and blend into the urban fabric. 

The even cornice line and horizontal treatment of these terraced houses in London's Belgravia neighborhood express continuity (2005).

Design Considerations When Expressing Individuality and Continuity:

Stronger horizontal lines should be used on a wide building to emphasize continuity.  Stronger vertical lines should be used on a taller, slender building to emphasize individuality.  (This can be reversed, but requires a great deal of skill to pull off).  It is difficult to gracefully combine a vertical mass in a horizontal building without creating a feeling of discord.  By utilizing either a horizontal or a vertical treatment for the entire composition, unity can be achieved between disparate elements.

The individual treatment of St Stephen's Basilica contrasts with the continuous treatment of the framing buildings to terminate the vista down Zrinyi Street in Budapest, Hungary (2008)

Powerful urban compositions can be created by skillfully utilizing both individual and continuous buildings. For any true aesthetic judgment of the productions of architecture and urbanism, we must judge them as we do a picture.  Buildings must be judged in the context of their surroundings.  Buildings expressing continuity and horizontality can be used to form a serene backdrop or frame.  Striking results can be obtained by contrasting this placid backdrop with a focal building expressing individuality and verticality.  This arrangement is seen, for example, in a town whose otherwise plain silhouette is pierced by the steeple of a church.  Any ordinary group of heterogeneous parts can be pulled together if one of them can be arranged as a tower around which the rest cluster.

Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France is a classic example where a single dominant vertical form expressing individuality is used to organize a grouping of disparate buildings into an expression of sublime unity.  (Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Amazon: Architectural Composition (1908, by John Beverley Robinson)

Summary Part 1: Unity - Architectural Composition by John Beverley Robinson

As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the first in a several part series summarizing the classic book Architectural Composition, 1908 by John Beverley Robinson.  This wonderful book is a treasure trove of design principles written during the architectural zenith that occurred at the turn of the last century.  These design principles are quite universal as they grow from the way humans naturally perceive and process the built environment through their senses.  These design principles are therefore as useful for us today as they were in Robinson's own time.

Robinson begins his discussion with the design characteristic he considers most essential: unity. 

Robinson defines, "in all works of fine art there is one fundamental quality which from antiquity has been recognized as essential.  This quality is unity."  Great architecture provides a sense of clarity, harmony and legibility.  Architecture that embodies these traits, and that eliminates discord, is said to possess unity. 

Robinson explains, "one of the chief sources of unity in the arts of design, including architecture, lies in the placement and arrangement of parts, by which objects otherwise unrelated are so placed that the mind loses sight of them as separate objects, and notes only the combination as a single whole."  In the same way that a friend’s face is more than just an assortment of eyes, nose, mouth and ears, a collection of columns and moldings, if arranged properly, becomes a portico.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Robinson illustrates, "a number of lines taken at random and laid in no particular order, cannot impress the mind otherwise than as a multitude of objects (Fig. I, a).  Placed thus (b), radiating from the centre, the mind regards the combination as a single star or flower, and forgets to enumerate its parts at all.  So such forms as these (c) remain isolated individuals until they are combined in a honeysuckle (d).  Another source of unity is the intrinsic power of certian forms when properly placed.  Thus, in an enriched moulding the forms of the enrichment acquire unity merely by their arrangement in a straight line (e), just as in (b) unity was given by arrangement in a circle.  The addition of horizontal straight lines on each side, as at (f), at once gives a complete union of parts, so that an observer, if asked what he saw in (f) would answer, a border, or an ornamental band, and not, ten ovals, eleven dashes, and two lines."

"So fundamental is this quality of unity that scarcely any other is needed for excellence in a work of art.  If we can succeed in producing something in which no part seems to be extraneous [or arbitrarily stuck on], we may be confident that we have done a fairly good thing.  If, in addition, every part is exactly suited to its place in shape, size, and relative dimensions, the result will be not far from perfection."

Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia 2008

"A number of tools are available to the designer in pursuit of unity...  For example, straight lines to give unity are used constantly in architecture in the horizontal moldings.  These long uninterrupted horizontal lines visually hold vertical elements like columns in place and keep them from appearing ready to march away...  A firm base line does this, and a cornice does it even more.  Think pictorially primarily, structurally secondarily...  The structural reason for horizontal lines is not important, other than that nothing should shock the judgment with illusion."

Robinson continues his discussion with important compositional principles that can be applied to imbue an architectural design with character, while maintaining a strong sense of unity.  

We'll explore these over the next few posts...

Amazon: Architectural Composition (1908, by John Beverley Robinson)

Architectural Composition by John Beverley Robinson

During recent trips to historic cities in Europe and America, I have grown increasingly amazed at the level of consistent design proficiency demonstrated in the historic architecture.  The astoundingly sensitive attention to architectural proportion and detail is such that these cities (often built as recently as the early 1900s) sometimes appear to have been conceived by a species other than our own!

Vienna, Austria 2007

At the turn of the last century, traditional architecture reached a zenith.  The classical art of architectural composition, revived during the Renaissance, was refined through the efforts of many talented architects and through the numerous ateliers and schools of design that orbited the great Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (1648-1968).  The Ecole des Beaux Arts is today often remembered for grand and ornate buildings, but upon closer inspection, its practitioners demonstrated equal proficiency at the design of beautifully proportioned and modest structures with quite reserved details.  

Great effort was made to teach these principles of architectural composition to new generations of designers in order to keep this noble tradition alive. This period saw the publication of many wonderful texts about the art of architectural composition.  These books, which detail the process used to create the astoundingly beautiful architecture of this period, unfortunately fell largely into disuse and were forgotten during the radical cultural shifts and experimentation that occurred during the Modernist era of the early and mid 1900s.  Luckily, efforts to digitize our literary heritage, such as the Google Books Library Project, are making these tremendously valuable and useful volumes easily available once again!

One such book worth reading is Architectural Composition by John Beverley Robinson, first published in 1908.  The book is subtitled "An Attempt to Order and Phrase Ideas Which Hitherto Have Only Been Felt by the Instinctive Taste of Designers" and attempts to articulate universal principles of architectural composition, regardless of style.  Its words are every bit as applicable to the design of urban buildings today as they were during Robinson's own time.  Over the next several posts I'll summarize this wonderful book's primary points. 

Amazon: Architectural Composition (1908, by John Beverley Robinson)