The Australian Ugliness

by Robin Boyd

  Sullivan’s most famous maxim, ‘form follows function’, the banner under which most modern architects rallied for half a century, is now questioned in theory and often discarded in practice. Under the prevailing influence of advanced engineering and geometry, form follows fabrication. Every specific rule built up by some camp is demolished by another, yet as long as architecture remains without accepted codes or canons it cannot remove the barrier between it and the busy man in the street. Creative architecture will tend to remain the province of a coterie of individualists, prima donnas and dedicated if somewhat befogged reformers; and ordinary building will remain in the hands of commercial Featurists.

  But is a code really necessary? Can it be true that the key to classification of the architectural ideal is simply to be found, without intellectual help, along the primrose path to beauty? Then what is beauty? No matter how liberal we may attempt to be in defining universal laws of visual enjoyment, we can be sure someone will disagree. For one thing, we will be limited by the narrowness of our experiences to this date. With the most perfect understanding of the aesthetic education of Western man, with the broadest outlook on the whole world story of building, still we must be limited by our ignorance of the future’s eye. If a canon of architecture proposed now is to be worth anything it must convince that it is capable of embracing all the buildings which civilized men have loved: a stone temple, a glassy cultural centre, a medieval cathedral, a hyperbolic shape in concrete, and anything which the future may produce including new forms for new social orders, soft walls, wind curtains, and other mechanical, electronic, or chemical devices which may extend our range of vision and understanding. Any narrower view of beauty is doomed to be soon as obsolete as Ruskin’s measured prejudices.

  Undaunted by Ruskin’s failure to describe his sublime architectural vision in terms of permanent meaning, other writers tried to illuminate the darkness as the seven lamps grew dim. In his study of Renaissance building, Sir Geoffrey Scott in 1924 counter-attacked Ruskin on behalf of the quattrocento, dismissed his pontifical artistic laws and explained the phenomenon of architectural beauty in purely humanistic terms as empathy, Einfühlung, visual satisfaction on the highest plane. In the development of a theory established by Lipps, he described the architectural art as the transcription of the body’s state into the forms and terms of building. The major elements of a structure give certain promises to the roving eye; if these are fulfilled by the remainder of the elements, beauty is experienced; if the expectations are unanswered or falsified the end is dissatisfaction, the contrary of beauty. Again, any grossly unbalanced structure is discomforting because it disturbs the observer’s projected feelings of his own bodily balance.

  These generalizations are convincing, but they are all but demolished by an untenable example given by Sir Geoffrey. Top-heaviness discomforts us, he said, and ‘sooner or later, if the top-heaviness…is sufficiently pronounced, every spectator will judge that the building is ugly.’ But even as he wrote this architects were toying with top-heaviness as a valuable new expression in their language, a qualification of bulk which was made possible by frame construction, and by the middle of the twentieth century top-heaviness was almost as familiar in the streets as symmetry was in the middle of the eighteenth century. Urban buildings stood on sheets of glass, houses balanced on thin sticks, everywhere heavy loads projected in cantilever, defying gravity; and beauty grew with familiarity. Finally Oscar Niemeyer designed a museum for Caracas which is a pyramid upturned and caught by its apex as it was about to tumble down a dangerous hill. Top-heaviness could not be more pronounced, and eyes practised in balancing feats quickly judged it one of the most beautiful buildings of the mid-century. In short, the specious theory of empathy, of architectural beauty somehow relating to bodily balance, collapses when we move outside the aura of classical repose.

  A more impressive statement of a similar theory is made by one of today’s avant-garde, a structural innovator whose buildings command the greatest respect for any of his philosophical comments: the Italian, Pier Luigi Nervi. For long he has been attracted by the idea that some sort of measurable relationship exists between technical and aesthetic quality, and he says: ‘I have examined the greatest possible number of meaningful structures of the past and present and have come to the conclusion that for all great structures, without exception, the indispensable premise for architectonic beauty is correct technique. This is probably due to the fact that the intuition and sensitivity to statics which in a more or less confused form may be found in all people are satisfied by those structures which immediately reveal the play of forces and resistance which define its equilibrium.’

  On an up-to-date plane and from an unimpeachably up-to-date commentator, here is Sir Geoffrey Scott’s thesis restated. Nervi is saying that even untrained eyes know intuitively when the technique of structure is perfect, and he castigated buildings like Sydney Opera House for ‘the most open anti-functionalism in statics and construction’. But is it possible that any eye, especially the layman’s eye, really can sense statics in any detail? Can anyone tell by looking whether or not redundant material has been used to support an unfamiliar roof of reasonably sophisticated design, or whether a cantilever is correctly shaped? And how many eyes, however well trained, can tell from a finished shell concrete structure how thick the shell is and how clumsy or clever its technique? It seems more probable that the eye reacts best with experience. It gradually finds more confidence and tranquillity as it grows accustomed to what once appeared startlingly unfamiliar escapades in engineering.

  Others in the twilight of eclecticism early this century contributed to the short shelf of books begun by Ruskin, books designed to open laymen’s eyes so that they might share the delights with architects. The most explicit and complete of these was a labour of love by an American, Talbot Hamlin, first published in 1916 under the title The Enjoyment of Architecture and covering all significant periods of building to that date. Thirty years later he rewrote the book as Architecture—an Art for All Men, and now included the modern movement, which had grown from infancy to some sort of maturity in the years between. This new architecture he saw, not as a revolutionary artistic movement throwing rules and restrictions to the winds, but as another responsible variation in the continuum of Western architectural expression. Thus he applied the same rules and guides to the Roman Colosseum, a modern hotel, and Santa Sophia, and virtually made bedfellows of Michelangelo, Le Corbusier, Bramante, and any man with his name on a hoarding in Pitt Street. He found the rules under the Greek columns, Gothic carving and aluminium sheathing, in ‘a substratum of what seems to be universal law’. Architecture, as an art of form and colour, has its stable codes and approved criteria, and, ‘whatever may be their basis’, he wrote, ‘certain qualities seem to be possessed by any works of painting or sculpture or architecture which the consensus of opinion of mankind has judged beautiful.’ He noted that unity was the essence, and examined ‘the dominant qualities that are common to all beautiful and unified buildings’.

  Once these are understood, he promised, sound criticism of architecture as pure form is simple and inevitable. He then defined at length the principal accepted academic rules of composition applicable to architecture: balance (‘the parts…on either side of an imaginary line…shall be of apparently equal weight’), rhythm (‘units shall bear some rhythmic relation to one another’), good proportion (‘the several parts…so relate as to give a pleasing impression’), good scale (‘the observer gains some conception of the actual size’), harmony (‘not a single element…to appear disturbingly distinct and alone and separate’), and the need for a climax (‘some spot in a building more interesting than the rest’).

  The shades of this code of composition may be discovered in most famous historic buildings and, as standard ammunition for instructors in architecture, the rules guarantee a certain satisfaction whenever conscientiously applied by an earnest student. The nature of this satisfaction, this approved sta
te of building beauty, is indicated by Hamlin in remarks dropped during his analysis: ‘restful and charming’, ‘the eye, as it wanders over a large building, grows tired if there is no single feature on which it can rest’, ‘…a sense of repose results at once, and consequently the building appears beautiful.’ All is to be restful, reposeful, serene and unoffending.

  Other books on the shelf seek the same unruffled calm. ‘Every really good architectural work is clothed, as it were, in an atmosphere of repose,’ wrote John Belcher, a Past President of the Royal Institute of British Architects in Essentials in Architecture in 1907. He listed one or two other rules leading to the desired end: breadth (‘a certain comprehensiveness of form and firmness of line’) and grace (‘a dignified seriousness of purpose’). A. S. G. Butler, in The Substance of Architecture, 1927, emphasized the importance to the sense of repose of a notable centre of interest, a fulcrum round which all the weights are balanced and to which all lines lead, so that ‘gradually, as we study the arrangement, we find a focus—as it were the heart of the thing—to which our eye returns gratefully and rests there.’ Butler, however, could see that this conception of architectural expression smacked a little too much of quiescence, not to say ennui, and he defined a ‘deeper meaning of the word “repose”, as that effect of vital stability in the appearance of a building which we enjoy in our appreciation of its harmonious unity: the sense of tranquillity which…beautiful architecture provokes with its just adaptation of those two elements…We lean on it and it rests us. Hence repose.’ He explained that a ball-room, although properly enticing, should still be as much in repose (in its own somnambulistic way, one supposes) as a farmhouse in a sleepy valley.

  Before the modern movement was generally accepted in Australia, a compromise was successfully negotiated by many prudent architects, leading to a brief Indian Summer of the Renaissance between the two world wars, with buildings stripped of Victorian romanticism, and ornamentally reserved, but dedicated to the Classical concept. Many of the most carefully designed buildings of this period, for instance, the war memorials in most capital cities, had potential power in their conceptions. The Canberra National War Memorial had a thunderous motive of a courtyard plan pinned to the ground by a heavy, domed tower. It was bare for its time, in that it had fewer and shallower mouldings than were usual. And its grouping of windows and arcades, its massing of solids were bold and effective. It did not permit features of detail to be prominent enough to destroy the motivating concept. This destruction, however, was achieved by additional compromise elements: intermediate steps between the tower and the base, thin buttresses on the tower, various other softening transitional steps between parts, and numerous rests and cushions for the eye. Here architectural composition in the grand manner may be seen more isolated than is usual, thanks to the general simplicity of the masses. All the academic rules, of symmetry, good balance, climax, good proportion and so on as recommended, are followed meticulously, and with some originality and sensitivity; and the result exudes nothing if not the architectural repose of which the writers of the twilight were speaking. The vigorous motive is not permitted to rule the building; instead it must submit to the rules of eye-resting: the tower not too high (step it in near the top), the base not too long or too low (break it somewhere; soften it). Lead the eye gently, no surprises, no shocks; we aim to please; the customer is always right. It would not be fair to say that all the strength of the Canberra memorial is lost in the scholarly composition. It has the requested degree of dormant vitality. It is in fact a sleeping giant of familiar mien; one has surely met him many times before in different clothes in other countries.

  The revolutionary twentieth century movement opened with a blaze of protest against the ancient dogmas; early buildings struggled to free themselves of rules of good proportion, scale, taste and eye-resting. But today one could fire an antique cannon down many a street of modern buildings and not strike a single rebel. Ornament, as understood by the ancients, is not altogether free again, and simplicity of massing, the accent on space, transparency, suspension and mechanization have changed the expression of buildings. But architecture has returned nonetheless to an essentially classical concept of its aesthetic function. It aims to please, to rest; to soothe—though now in clean, uncluttered lines instead of ornamental plaster, and with light, air and grey-tinted glass in place of massive shaded permanence. The rules of composition apply again, if in a freer way; one talks again of good proportion, scale, balance and attractiveness as things apart from a building’s motive. The notion of a universal character returns, a translatable quality not relative to the eye of the observer and certainly not affected by his mental attitude or the psychology of the moment, an elevated, nebulous, mysterious quality which may rest on cathedral, house, or factory, not necessarily in the same shape every time but providing the same visual balm. On the lowest plane this concept is an instruction to every architect on every project to achieve sweetness and light, a winsome smile, a pretty setting for beautiful people surrounded by charming pictures in lovely golden frames. On the highest plane it is the ancient search for a universal perfection of form, a return to Vitruvius.

  In his first book, the second chapter, Vitruvius defined good architectural arrangement as the disposition in their just and proper places of all the parts of the building, and the elegance or pleasing effect of the whole. ‘Pleasing Effect’ then became the slogan emblazoned on the banner wherever the classical tradition was carried. To realize this universal property of pleasingness the ancients sought a golden rule, the vital touch of nature’s design, the key to a perception unlocking the innermost secrets of the design of the universe. Characteristically they began the search on the surface of the human body, believing that the secret of the design of its form would be the key to all creation.

  Vitruvius started methodically at the navel, noting it to be the natural central point: ‘If a man be placed flat on his back with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom.’ He also explained that a square may be discovered in the body, for a man’s arm-stretch ‘will be found to be the same’ as his height.

  This picture of the man in the circle has pleased many generations. Somehow it seems evidence of our importance in the scheme of things, suggesting at least a comforting niche for our mortal frames in the cosmic pattern, if not positive proof of our being made in God’s image. In his study of the Renaissance, Rudolph Wittkower disagreed with Scott’s theory of empathy, and with the humanist’s simple aim to please the eye. On the contrary he pictured the age in earnest search of a mathematical and harmonic integration of architecture in the cosmos. The Vitruvian Man ‘seemed to reveal a deep and fundamental truth about man and the world’, he said, ‘and its importance for Renaissance architects can hardly be over-estimated. The image haunted their imagination.’

  The artists of the Renaissance delighted in illustrating the concept. Leonardo’s famous diagram is the most thorough. His man has a body fixed in the centre of a superimposed circle and square. Man’s limbs are shown in two positions, with legs spread easily and arms raised in a V to touch the circle, and with feet together and arms stretched wide to touch the square. Other artists pictured the Vitruvian figure differently. In 1511 Fra Giocondo, the first to publish a drawing, had Man’s arms horizontal and his legs comparatively close together. Cessariano’s edition of Vitruvius in 1521 spread Man’s legs into an acrobatic split. Francesco Giorgi in 1525 had to bend his Man’s arms to contain them within a circle which had suddenly contracted for some reason not suggested by Vitruvius until it almost touched his head. Notwithstanding the different postures, all these universal men were contained precisely within the perfect geometric form of a circle. This is not remarkable since artists can adjust posture and proportions at will. All the men in the pictures are proportioned differently, as indeed are men in life, and the artists could jus
t as well have turned their pens to prove that man bore a striking resemblance to a triangle, or a tree—which may be a more convincing hypothesis. But the circle attracts because it is the most obvious basis of cosmic geometry, and a circular container adds dignity to our physical form. It reminds us that, however vulnerable and ungainly our body may be in comparison with the forms of some of our four-footed co-inhabitants of the world, it alone when spreadeagled can fit inside the shape of the universe. Nevertheless, if we were cats we would fill the Vitruvian circle much more snugly and in our sleep.

  Vitruvius scrutinized his fellow men more closely to find further evidence of harmonic pattern. He was delighted to discover that their frames carried a network of mathematical divisions: ‘The human body is so designed by nature,’ he wrote in Book III, ‘that the face from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same, the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth…’ and so on. Furthermore the face is a veritable graph: ‘The distance from the bottom of the chin to the underside of the nostrils is one third of it, the nose from the underside of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third comprising the forehead…The other members too have their own symmetrical proportions.’