Chapter 1: The academic tradition and the concept of elementary composition
Cubist and Futurist movements occurring.
Banham lines out three new things: A sense of architectural responsibility to society connected to the Deutscher Werkbund (Pugin, Ruskin, Morris), a rationalist approach (Willis, Le Duc, Choisy), and academic instruction (l’Ecole des Beaux Arts)
Five volume work by Guadet “Eléments et théorie de l’architecture.”
Charles Blanc (l’Ecole des Beaux Arts librarian) ”Le Grammaire des Arts de Dessin“
Guadet’s insistence on composition echoing Durand on assembly of component volumes.
Axial planning and cataloged styles assumed and unjustified until challenged in the early twentieth century. Standard crib book is Normand’s “Parallèle“
Talbot Hamilin’s “Forms and Functions…” is attempted remake of Guadet.
Different definitions of Science and Objectivity within the historical perspective and when referring to design.
Science: “erudation plus logical method” rather than “experimental philosophy.”
Obectivity: “logically impeccable” rather than “substantiated by experiment” (meh…)
Banham parallels Guadet’s ideas on to architecture to Blanc’s on abstract art. Blanc gives little consideration to subject matter, Guadet little to “stylistic details.”
What it all boils down to is an emerging idea that history is “to be understood, not imitated, its lessons embodied less in the actual monuments of former time than in the principles that can be abstracted from them.”
