The Background
This is the second in a series of articles written for The Atlanta Journal in 1890 and 1891 by W.W. Goodrich, an architect who practiced in Atlanta between 1889 and 1895.
In this article, Goodrich informed readers on the attributes of a qualified architect, at a time when the building industry was almost entirely unregulated — particularly in the Southeast — and anyone could market themselves as an architect regardless of training or experience.
One of several Atlanta architects who publicly advocated for increased oversight of the profession, here he called for an examining body to register architects, which was not established in the state of Georgia until 1919.1 2 3 4
Good Architecture,
And Its Scientific Requirements.
What Steps Are to Be Applied.
An Able and Comprehensive Paper on the Qualifications of an Architect–Buildings Without Claim to Architectural Merit.
Written for the Journal.
It would not be very easy to draw the line between a qualified and unqualified architect, because it is hard to say what the conditions of successful architecture are. There are many who have achieved a professional reputation by name, but whose buildings are not remarkable for any high quality, either as works of art or as successfully planned structures. There are others who are not known to fame whose works, though small, bear the impress of artistic ability. But the question still remains, what are the tests of good architecture, where should the scientific requirements end and the artistic begin? And until these points are decided it will be hard to apply a rule. The practice of architecture cannot be gauged like that of law or medicine by the number of briefs or patients, which are more or less accurately the measures of successful practice, as the fact that one man designs and carries out more buildings than another becomes no test of the artistic qualification. The oftener a physician prescribes or a surgeon operates, the more skillful he becomes–so in the practice of law; but it cannot be said of the architect’s work. There are hundreds of buildings eminently successful as works of skillful arrangement and construction, but which have little claim to architectural merit. Works of this class imply the profession of faculties of a high order and technical skill, all of which may be acquired without any art function. We have abundant examples of cleverly-arranged offices, schools and hospitals, which are without any of the qualities which render them artistic or even agreeable. Other buildings can be named that exhibit every attribute of artistic beauty, wholly wanting in the utilitarian requirements. Which of these two classes belongs to the architect? Those who make good building essential will answer that the first of these descriptions fulfill the object of architecture, and they will be found to include the largest number of people. Usefulness and sound construction are the tests. Publican criticism of architects’ work has generally proceeded on these grounds. Like the reputation of a great man, the merits of a building are of slow discovery. It is the public test of fitness which approves or otherwise. Not one in a thousand can see anything in a handsome, elegant, or picturesque building to put it in the balance against fitness and convenience. Those qualities on paper may gain it for the premium; but the public are the first to find fault with insufficient or awkward arrangements, bad lighting, ventilation, and so on. They may admire a handsome elevation, but they estimate its value at an exceedingly low price. Like good poetry, architecture is understood only by the very few–those, we mean, who take a real pleasure in ordered arrangements, in picturesque handling of masses, in light and shadow. The popular admiration is not worth much when it comes to payment or a question of rates; fine architecture, like high class music or entertainments, sinks rapidly, and the real measure of appreciation or discernment is found to be very small. Fine art, then, being an intangible quality, is undervalued, and those who have to live by it are very few compared with those who deal with the more practical requirements of building. It follows that the architect’s qualifications will be estimated accordingly, and that they must be governed by the public demand. Hence the only successful condition of the architect is that he can accommodate himself to the times, not be too sensitive an artist, nor exacting in his tastes, but be a compliant man of business, a scientific builder.
Our experience of the profession points to the necessity of making the architect primarily a skilled arranger and constructor. Skill in arrangement and construction, however, applies to a variety of buildings intended for a multiplicity of purposes, and one man can never have more than once or twice in his life the opportunity of designing any one special building. In short, the qualifications vary for almost every description of building, and an architect who has acquired skill as a house designer may have no aptitude for designing a school or church. We can only say that there is a certain knowledge and procedure necessarily common to both. How to set about a plan is the first step; for if a man knows how to proceed he can soon solve the problem of any new building that may be presented to him. The experienced architect of one class of work goes to work unconsciously upon a truly logical basis. He knows by heart the requirements, say of a school room–a large array of types or precedents are ready in his mind. His mind agrees on a few principles, as, for instance, the light must enter on the left, desks must be placed along this side, the proportion of the room is regulated by the desks, and he sketches out a plan jointly by the aid of these principles and the types he has stored in his memory. The inexperienced does not proceed in this manner. He seeks precedents, and sets to work copying or arranging something by their aid, but without reference to data. The work fails because it has not taken account of facts; precedents are useful, as they show deductions from facts, but useless unless the latter are known. From which considerations we gather that in planning we have first to discover all the requirements, about lighting and intercommunication, and then by a synthetic process from particulars to generals, to arrange a general form that shall satisfy those data. As the naturalist and scientific observer from observing particulars and their relations can deduce a law, so the architect, who has a new problem of arrangement to solve, formulates a plan. So the function of every room may be met and expressed.
How to design a plan is one of the things the architect has learned. It is included in the course of his training. The statistics of plans are considered one of the primary attainments of the architect. We mean, by “statistics”, all those particulars derived from experience bearing upon dimensions, cubic space, light, positions of doors and fireplaces, seating accommodations, etc. Thus, in the design of a church, the statistics would include the proper distance between the backs of seats, space to each person. In the construction of a theater or concert hall the ascertained distance in front of, and laterally from, the stage or platform at which the human voice can be heard, the proportion of stage to auditorium, the “setting-up” of sections or “sighting” of the various parts of the house, the raking or stepping of the seats and fronts of the “circle” to the inacoustic curve, are among the facts which experience has established, and which cannot be departed from to any extent. The qualities upon which successful hearing depends, the requirements for fire construction, heating, and good ventilation, are among the main essentials of truthful architecture, and these are the points which the public considers they have a right to look for in the building designed by an architect. Many subtle and conflicting questions of construction arise out of the theory of acoustics–for instance, there are proper “lines” and setting-out of the seating and ceiling, the influence of ventilation, or the movement and direction of currents of air upon sound, the proper materials for the reinforcement of sound. When the day comes for registering the architect, one of the main purposes of the examining body will be to secure to each member a modicum of such applied science, to guarantee to the employer qualification in his architect shall put him far above the builder, who has learned construction empirically.
In short, it is the scientifically-trained builder that the public expects. We hear a few say that the architectural tests will be of no avail, for the public will still employ the practical builder. Yes, very true. They will employ him if they cannot get one any better; but the object of future legislation will be to create an improved class of builders–men trained in science, and who are experts in its application to the practical wants of the day. It is for the coming architect to make himself one of these, first of all, so that he may hold his own against the untaught builder, who has only learned one way of doing his work–not always the best or the most economical in its results. Building, like all other trades, has fallen into a groove, out of which mere workshop influence will never raise it.
W.W. Goodrich5
References
- “Better Education Bills Are Passed”. The Atlanta Constitution, August 7, 1919, p. 5. ↩︎
- “Governor Appoints Board of Architects”. The Atlanta Constitution, September 28, 1919, p. 9. ↩︎
- “State Architectss [sic] Are Named by Dorsey”. The Atlanta Journal, September 28, 1919, p. B7. ↩︎
- Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia 1919 [volume 1] ↩︎
- Goodrich, W.W. “Good Architecture.” The Atlanta Journal, May 27, 1890, p. 6. ↩︎