The Journals of Ayn Rand (29 page)

(What horrors and crimes aren’t always being excused by this great buck-passing to the “rhythm” or “spirit” of the times?)

Kahn’s insistence on the “crafts”—too much. It is not part of architecture. He believes that: “There is a potential and currently neglected field for architects in industrial designing of fabrics, metals, and so forth.” I’m not sure, but it seems to me that such a “field” would, to Frank Lloyd Wright, be what writing for Hollywood is to a writer.

Such advice to architects as telling a store how they can sell more groceries by changing their lighting. (Practical, perhaps, but is it architecture or window-dressing?)

A 1932 conference between four big architectural organizations discusses plans for training architects and admitting them to practice. A suggestion is made that the organizations themselves make the rules about admission of a young architect to practice. (Sic!—this is the organization to which Frank Lloyd Wright does
not
belong!)

One of the guys there expresses the hope that they should make “A.I.A. membership synonymous with qualifications for practice.” (! ! !)

Kahn explains that this was done to unify the license requirements in various states. Most states have examinations for licenses. When an architect has been in practice for 15 years, he can take an examination for a National License, which allows him to practice all over the U.S.A. Kahn’s experience with this examination: the examining board was composed of “eminent” professors of architecture who had never put up a building.

The meeting of architectural organizations planned to pattern the licensing of architects on that of the Medical profession. (But medicine is not a creative art. Architecture is. Even at that, the American Medical Association has done much harm along with the good, such as the accusation often heard, possibly true, of keeping important discoveries off the market in order not to lose valuable practice. Wouldn’t the same happen to architecture ? And how safe is the distinction between purely educational tests and esthetic tests for the admittance to practice? What if this becomes an artistic dictatorship? (Check up.)

 

Let us decide once and for all what is a unit and what is to be only a part of the unit, subordinated to it. A building is a unit—all else in it, such as sculpture, murals, ornaments, are parts of the unit and to be subordinated to the will of the architect, as creator of the unit. No talk here of “the freedom of craftsmen” for sculptors and the like.

Also—
man
is a unit, not
society.
So that man cannot be considered as only a subordinate part to be ruled by and to fit into the ensemble of society.

(I really believe that a building is a unit, not a city, so that city planning should not control all buildings. Because a house can be the product of one man, but a city cannot. And nothing collective can have the unity and integrity of a “unit.”)

Much of the confusion in “collectivism” and “individualism” could be cleared up if men [knew] what constitutes a unit, what is to be regarded as such.

 

As to the rules about this—my job of the future.

[AR completed this “job of the future”
in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. ]

From:
The Life- Work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright’s principles of architecture (from his “In the Cause of Architecture,” 1908): “Simplicity and Repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.” A building should have as few rooms as possible, taking account of its needs. Openings should be integral features of the structure, and if possible its ornamentation. Eliminate unnecessary details and ornaments. Avoid appliances or fixtures. Avoid too many pictures on walls. Most or all the furniture should be built in as a part of the whole scheme. “There should be as many kinds (styles) of houses as there are kinds (styles) of people and as many differentiations as there are different individuals.” “A building should appear to grow easily from its site....” Follow the color schemes of nature. “Bring out the nature of materials, always let their nature intimately into your scheme.” “Buildings like people should be quiet, sincere, true and then withal as gracious and lovable as may be. Above all, integrity.”

At the beginning of his career, Wright found exceptions to the prevalent eclecticism “chiefly among American men of business with unspoiled instincts and untainted ideals. A man of this type usually has the faculty of judging for himself.”

At the beginning he had great trouble with everyone: workers, mills, financiers and all. Millmen in Chicago refused to work on a drawing bearing Wright’s signature; contractors even cut [the name] out, but millmen recognized the work and refused to “hunt for trouble.” (Incidentally, how about this for standardization? How can one get the “right” standardization? What protection is there within it for new ideas?)

He fought against the cheap imitators of his work, who copied his forms without understanding his principle, who made a new “style” and formula out of his forms.

Lewis Mumford [claims that] architects in America either pursue empty eclectic styles, or turn into engineers, consider utility only, devoid of art.

Wright differs from other modernists in that he wants to humanize the machine, make it serve artistic and human purposes, while the others want to make the machine and machine-principles dominant, eliminating all ornament entirely, all beauty and art, beyond the barest utility.

Mumford, with what seems to be the typical near-sightedness of a “pinkish” critic, has the presumption to ascribe Wright’s lack of recognition in America to his being “regional”; Wright’s buildings, according to Mumford, are suited only to prairie country, but not to all of the U.S. This is as much as Mr. Mumford can see. He goes so far as to say that Wright’s buildings are “not completely successful.” The problem of a new architecture will require, he claims, “the work of a hundred Wrights.”

Typical: one critic in the book praises Wright highly, but claims that he is “personal,” not “universal.” Another one praises him particularly for being “universal.” (Doesn’t it all seem like a lot of rot? What is universal? Is there such a thing? Isn’t it merely something individual copied by a great many people? As such, does it acquire any added value? Should there be any such conception as “universal” at all?)

Note how the “pinks” in art circles stuck to Wright like leeches, how they tried to use his fame and influence to their own ends, misinterpreting him entirely, ascribing to him their own pet sociological implications which he never intended or meant in a quite different way.

For instance, from Pieter Oud [a prominent Dutch architect]:

(Near enough, but how far! If I understand him, this is not at all what Wright preached and wanted and meant.)

H. H. Sullivan says that two great ideas confront each other in the world: the idea of tyranny, appealing to man’s fear, and the idea of freedom, appealing to man’s courage. [He says] we now have mental slavery, even though physical slavery is gone. But the idea of freedom is awakening, freedom of each individual’s own expression. (All this is fine, but what is this freedom and who threatens it? I wouldn’t call it democracy, as Sullivan always called it. Didn’t he really mean individualism?)

Sullivan is opposed to all abstract philosophy (Platonism, Neo-Platonism, German Transcendentalism) as sterilizing life. (Wonder if he means what I would mean by this?)

 

Raymond Hood states that “architecture is the business of manufacturing adequate shelter for human activities” and asserts that this conception imposes only one restriction: “That the product must be adequately practical as a shelter for human activities.”

Hood is a second-hander trying to be strictly “modem” in his terminology—which he stole from Le Corbusier, incidentally. Did he come to this “principle” himself? Did he fight for it? Or didn’t he just appropriate it when the battle had been won by others, by the suffering of others, and then parade it as his own great wisdom and gain prestige as a “foremost architect” thereby?

John Cushman Fistere, “Poets in Steel,”
Vanity Fair,
December, 1931.

Here’s Toohey in full colors. Listing America’s ten greatest architects, he starts off by being sarcastic about people naming Frank Lloyd Wright as first.

May I be forgiven for copying this! This is Toohey par excellence—god damn him!

Further from same: