Lectures on Architecture, Volume 2 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Académie des Beaux Academy according adopted advantage ancient annular vaults appearance appliances arches archi architects architecture arrangements artists bas-reliefs Beaux Arts body brick builders built cast-iron century civilisation considerable consists construction contractors corbels cornice covered decorative dwellings edifices effect employed endeavour entresol erected execution exhibit expense façade fact favourable feet figure floor forms framing France front give glazed Greek ground-floor habits hall harmony houses idea inches independent interior iron joists kind less lintels Louis the Fourteenth mansions masonry materials means medieval ments method Middle Ages monumental novel observed occupied ornamentation Paris plaster plaster of Paris Plate portico present principles produce protection public buildings question reason regard requirements result Roman Roman architecture roofing rooms rubble-work sculpture soffits space staircase statuary stone story structure style supports suppose surface T-iron taste thick tion trusses tympanums vaulting vestibule voussoirs walls weight yards
Popular passages
Page 126 - a practical architect might not unnaturally conceive the idea of erecting a vast edifice whose frame should be entirely of iron, and clothing that frame, preserving it, by means of a casing of stone.
Page 65 - Let us endeavour to proceed thus logically ; let us frankly adopt the appliances afforded us by our own times, and apply them without the intervention of traditions which have lost their vitality ; only thus shall we be able to originate an architecture. If iron is destined to play an important part in our buildings, let us study its properties, and frankly utilise them, with that sound judgment which the true artists of every age have brought to bear upon their works.
Page 59 - Roman architecture; but if we would invent that architecture of our own times which is so loudly called for, we must certainly seek it no longer by mingling all the styles of the past, but by relying on novel principles of structure.
Page 424 - It was at the beginning of the thirteenth century that attention was turned toward physical and mathematical science ; and architecture immediately joined in the movement and completely altered the traditional forms which it had hitherto retained. "The same phenomenon may be observed in the sixteenth century; it was by taking advantage of the scientific progress of that brilliant epoch that architecture modified the superannuated forms of the period called Gothic. "But few ages can compete with our...
Page 424 - ... buildings, and especially public buildings, "of a hybrid style," influenced by the "debased architecture of the last two centuries." Viollet-le-Duc then closes his book with a warning that it was not the engineer who needed the architect, but the architect who needed the engineer. If "they [architects] thus persist in rejecting that light, and in refusing that aid which science would gladly give them, the function of the architect is obsolete; while that of the engineer is commencing — that...
Page 422 - Architecture is the sister of Science; the former undergoes modifications and advances hand in hand with the latter, and reaches its point of greatest splendour when Science itself has just passed a glorious stage in its career. But we must make this distinction between Science and Art ; Science suffers no eclipses. What it has acquired by means of observation, analysis, and logical deductions, is a permanent gain, and is, as it were, incorruptible.
Page 59 - The use of rigid shafts or cast-iron columns as oblique supports, is a means of which our builders have not yet thought, I hardly know why, for this system is fruitful in deductions. It somewhat contravenes the principles of Greek and even Roman architecture ; but if we would invent that architecture of our own times which is so loudly called for...
Page 58 - ... masonry ceases to take any but an exceptional part, serving no other purpose than that of partition walls. What has nowhere been attempted with intelligence is the simultaneous employment of metal and masonry. Nevertheless it is this which in many cases architects should endeavour to accomplish. We cannot always erect either railway stations, markets, or other immense buildings entirely of masonry, such buildings being very heavy in appearance, very costly, and not presenting sufficiently ample...
Page 263 - ... so that one may pass directly from one into the others. Many other things are requisite: we want an awning to shelter the carriages; but those who come and go on foot — for in a democratic state of society there will be such, as well as people who keep their carriages — must also be able to come into the entrance hall without passing under the horses' noses; and there must be a closed vestibule where overcoats may be deposited.
Page 58 - ... solutions, but which must be different in order to make the most rational use of the products of the industry of the nineteenth century; for, ... had the medieval builders possessed cast or rolled iron of considerable dimensions, they would not have employed such a material as they employed stone... They would, on the contrary, have sought contrivances more in harmony with the nature of metal.