Structures- Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

by J E Gordon

  Of course this begs the whole question of ‘absolute’ standards in aesthetics. Are not ‘my’ values as good as ‘yours’, however deplorable and uneducated you may consider my taste to be? Well, I for one feel strongly that there are absolute standards in aesthetics which change only gradually through the ages. The modern fashion for ‘aesthetic democracy’ seems to me perverse and nihilistic and based largely on a desire to bash the Establishment. I would take the view that there is a continuing tradition of values in aesthetics – just as there is in ethics. The process is an iterative one, advancing slowly and painfully from age to age and from fashion to fashion, building, like science, on the experience of the past. Otherwise how are civilized values ever to be built up?

  Another debatable point is ‘Granted that common objects such as Greek amphorae were beautiful in some absolute sense, did the Greeks realize that they were beautiful?’ I am reminded of a remark in a leading article in The Times, which said something like ‘Good typography should be like clean glass – one should be able to see through it without being distracted. But if this is to happen then the typography must have that sort of discreet elegance and beauty which draws no attention to itself.’ I think this is why we only come to appreciate many common artefacts after they have passed out of common daily use. This does not mean that they are not absolutely and permanently beautiful.

  And the eighteenth century invented the Industrial Revolution. I think it is important to point out that many of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution were not philistines but sensitive men of considerable taste. Of such a kind were Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) and Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95). They made a great deal of money, the things they made were beautiful, and these two at least were model employers. No doubt there were black sheep, but the evils of the Industrial Revolution did not lie in the ethic of eighteenth-century culture and classicism but rather in a newly arisen vulgarity and greed which came, I think, from outside this ethic.

  Neither mass-production machinery itself nir its products are intrinsically ugly. The very first real mass-production machinery, the well-known block-making equipment installed around 1800 at Portsmouth Dockyard by Sir Marc Brunei, is handsome and satisfying. These machines were not only good-looking but also verv effective, for they turned out automatically all the millions of pulley blocks needed by the sailing navy during the Napoleonic Wars and for long afterwards. They saved a vast amount of money in doing so, for blocks are expensive things and a single warship might require 1,500 of them. Some of this machinery can now be seen in the Science Museum (Plate 21), but a good deal of it is still in service at Portsmouth after 180 years, supplying the modern navy’s diminished need for blocks. Not only the machinery but the product, the blocks themselves, is solid and handsome; whether you would call a block beautiful is a matter of opinion but they are certainly pleasant to look at.

  Sir Marc – father of the great Isambard Kingdom Brunei – was a French royalist emigre, and all accounts agree that he was a charming man. We are told that

  The dear old man had, with a great deal more warmth than belonged to that school, the manner, bearing and address and even the dress of a French gentleman of the ancient regime, for he had kept to a rather antiquated but very becoming costume. I was perfectly charmed with him at our first meeting. What I loved in old Brunei was his expansive taste and his love or ardent sympathy for things he did not understand or had not had time to learn. What I most admired of all was his thorough simplicity and unworldliness of character, his indifference to mere lucre, and his genuine absent-mindedness. Evidently he had lived as if there were no rogues in the world.

  No doubt a very impractical sort of character who would find difficulty in getting a job with a modern go-ahead firm. But his machinery is still producing blocks, nearly two hundred years after he made it – and it is beautiful.

  The great engineers who worked before and immediately after 1800 between them laid the foundations, not only of British industrial prosperity, but of the modern technological world. Many of these people were men of taste. But by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne public taste was undoubtedly deteriorating: by 1851 it had reached an all-time low. Shrewd observers, like Lord Playfair (1818-98), were, however, already remarking, as early as the time of the Great Exhibition, that British industry was losing its impetus and its creativity. Although it is very widely and commonly believed – indeed taken as axiomatic – that ugliness came in with industrialism as an inescapable consequence of mass-production, I doubt if this view would really stand up to proper historical examination. I think it is more reasonable to suppose that elegance and business enterprise declined more or less hand in hand and as a result of something rather nasty and complacent which emerged from the British character during the Age of Reform.

  The passionate protest of the Aesthetic movement in the 1870s and 1880s against the ugliness of pretty well everything failed to have much effect. I think this was less because these people were guyed by Gilbert and Sullivan in Patience and in the pages of Punch than because the movement was largely an escapist one and attacked the wrong targets. These sons of Mary failed to see that the root cause of all the brazen horrors which they hated so much lay, not in machinery itself, but in attitudes of mind. Like so many aesthetic reformers, they rejected technology instead of joining it. Perhaps if they had been prepared to learn technology and engineering they might have operated from within the system. But this is a laborious discipline which too many Arts people reject as being somehow beneath them. Of course William Morris and his followers studied and practised various small-scale technical crafts; but what was needed was to come to terms with real mass-production machinery and with the economic problems of a high-production society.

  On efficiency andfunctionalism

  But when his disciples saw it they had indignation, saying, ‘To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.’

  Matthew 26.8-9

  Although we may justly accuse modern engineers of philistinism, nearly all of them do cling to certain very important values which are unfashionable and unpopular in a permissive age. The chief of these are objectivity and responsibility. Engineers have to deal, not only with people and all their quirks and weaknesses, but also with physical facts. One can sometimes argue with people, and it is not difficult to deceive them; but it is of no use to argue with a physical fact. One cannot bully it or bribe it or legislate against it or pretend that the truth is something different or that the thing never happened at all. Laymen and politicians may create what fantasies they choose, but, for the engineers, ‘It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.’ Essentially, these people’s stuff must work, and go on working, safely and economically. It may be the engineer’s job to point out that the emperor has no clothes on, but however embarrassing this may be, we clearly need more, not less, of this kind of realism.

  In the pursuit of their objective profession, engineers have developed a number of concepts which are useful as aids to realism. One of these is ‘efficiency’. Thus it is very helpful to know what fraction of the expensive energy which is fed into an engine as fuel emerges as useful power. This can be expressed as a simple ratio or percentage, and it tells us a most important fact about one aspect of the working of the engine. Again, it is valuable to be able to compare the weights and costs and load-carrying capacities of various kinds of structures. As we saw in Chapter 14, there are various numerical ways of doing this.

  But the concept of efficiency is so useful, and sometimes so economically powerful, that there is a danger of being carried away by it. If we try to apply the idea of efficiency to the totality of a situation, then we are usually presuming to a wisdom, to a knowledge of all the facts, which is most unlikely in mortal man. We may fairly talk of the efficiency of an engine in terms of fuel consumption and power output: if we talk of the ‘efficiency of the engine’ – tout court – we are being hubrist
ic. We take no account, for instance, of the noise and smell which the engine makes. Or whether the man who has to start it is likely to have heart failure. Or how much pleasure anybody derives from its appearance*

  Even if we know all the relevant facts about any technological situation, which is impossible, we could not weight them or quantify them, for many of them are incommensurable. Not long ago there was a great to-do about the proposal to build a vast airport on the Essex coast. This was a project to put down a hideous mass of concrete and sheds and machinery upon the wet, ribbed sands of the Thames Estuary, where the gulls paddle and wheel and squawk. The politicians and the administrators and the economists and the engineers were full of facts and figures about the need for another airport. But it is impossible by any numerical criterion to compare the claims of the planners and the economists With the rights of the gulls and with the beauty of the wet sands: For myself, I am passionately on the side of the gulls, and it gives me immense pleasure to think of all those miles of wet sand and mud, which, I am glad to say, is quite useless and unproductive. So far, the gulls and the sands seem to be winning.

  I suppose that it is possible to measure the ‘efficiency’ of an airport in terms of how many aircraft and passengers it can handle in relation to the capital costs and running costs, and these figures have some practical value, even if they bear no relation in this world to seagulls and wet sand. But for many things the concept of efficiency is simply irrelevant. It is meaningless to talk about the ‘efficiency’ of a piece of furniture or of a cathedral. All the same, engineers cling to the idea that it ‘ought’ to be possible in some way to measure the ‘efficiency’ of practically everything. But this is nonsense.

  ‘Very well,’ says the engineer, ‘but things must be functional; the beauty of technology lies in its functionalism.’ If by this he means that things must work and do their job properly, then he is merely stating the obvious. But when we come to apply functionalism as an aesthetic criterion we are apt to get into some very deep water. There are certain structures, such as bridges, where the structural function is simple and obvious and proclaims itself as such. Many of these are beautiful, but some of them are not. There are also a certain number of very expensive artefacts which are certainly good-looking, such as Concorde and the Rolls Royce car. But are we sure that we are not admiring perfection of workmanship, purchased almost regardless of cost? Ought we not to take cost into account in assessing functionalism?

  Now a Ford car can be bought for something like a tenth of the cost of a Rolls, and in the real world, where things have to be paid for, many people would regard the Ford, as more ‘functional* than the Rolls. But the external appearance of the Ford bears little relation to its mechanical workings; what we see is more or less a tin box put round the machinery by the bodymakers and the stylists. The mechanical, that is to say, the functional, parts of any modern mass-produced car are not attractive, being made largely from bits of wire and bent metal which we find it difficult to admire, however useful they may be.

  In the same sort of way, most electrical devices such as wireless sets are hideous in their naked wiry state, and we are constrained to hide them inside black or grey or walnut boxes. On the whole it may be fair to say that, as modern technology gets more and more functional, we can less and less bear to look at it.

  But have we not good precedents in Nature? The outside of a person or an animal may be very beautiful; the inside is generally repulsive. Our admiration of Nature is highly selective. We admire certain stages of growth (lambs but not foetuses); we are generally horrified by decay and all those worms. But decay is just as necessary and just as functional as growth.

  With regard to this question of functionalism and ‘efficiency’ Nature seems to have a sense of humour, or perhaps just a sense of proportion. She will construct the stem of a plant, for instance, with the uttermost regard for metabolic economy; the thing is a miracle of structural efficiency. Having done this, she will put a great big flower on top – for fun, as far as one can see. In the same way, peacocks have tails and girls have hair which cannot be considered strictly functional. If it be urged by some dreary person that these things are done to encourage reproduction, this is only putting the argument back by one notch. For why should these ornaments be attractive, sexually or otherwise?

  Although it is practically an article of religion with many engineers to believe in a close connection between functional ‘efficiency’ and appearance, I am, myself, sceptical. Of course, the grossly ineffectual will, and should, offend the eye, but I doubt if the refinements of technical performance really improve appearance very much. Very often it is the other way round; the pursuit of the last ounce of performance results in a boring appearance, as one can see in modern yachts. For myself, I stick to the belief that what one gets aesthetically from an artefact is some combination of the personality of the maker with the accepted values of hisage. If you walk down any street with your eyes and your mind open you can form your own judgement on both.

  ‘Science’ has been attacked on almost every conceivable ground ever since the Renaissance; most of these attacks were more or less rubbish. But it is always strange to me that what seems the real argument against science is seldom raised, at least in a direct form. This is that science has subtly warped our system of values by teaching us to judge on grounds which are excessively functional. The modern man asks ‘What is this man or this thing for?’ rather than ‘What is this man or this thing?’ Herein, no doubt, lie the causes of many of our modern sicknesses. The aesthetic judgement seeks, however inadequately, to answer the broader and the more important question. Too often nowadays our subjective judgement clashes with our scientific (or banausic) judgement. But we sweep the aesthetic judgement under the carpet at our peril.

  Naturally there is nothing in all this to prevent a beautiful object from also being an efficient one. The point I am making is that the two qualities are what the mathematician would call ‘independent variables’. I am reminded of the Irish yachtsman’s remark:’ An ugly ship is no more attractive than an ugly woman -however fast she may be’.

  On formalism and stresses

  Modern art and architecture make a great parade about their freedom from traditional forms and conventions – which is possibly why they have achieved so little. Yet formality in design or in manners is not a handicap; such conventions protect the weak and aid the strong. All the loveliest ships have been designed within a stylistic tradition, and I cannot imagine that their designers felt cramped by it. The Greek dramatists wrote within a strict set of rules, but it would be as absurd to think that the Antigone is limited by the dramatic unities as to suppose that Jane Austen would somehow have been able to produce greater masterpieces if she had felt free to make use of bad language and overt sex. Of course, fully to appreciate formal achievement it is necessary to have some knowledge of the rules. This applies just as much to the appreciation of cathedrals and bridges and ships as it does to watching cricket. This provides one good reason for knowing something about the principles of engineering as well as the history of art and architecture.

  When Ictinus designed the Parthenon in 446 b.c. he worked within the well-established Doric order of architecture. The Parthenon, the Temple of the Maiden, is indisputably one of the most beautiful buildings in the world – possibly the greatest of all artefacts. Although it is dedicated to the divine Athena it is, to me, the supreme statement of humanism – of what the scientist Humphry Davy called the ‘brilliant but delusive dreams concerning the infinite improvability of man’. Furthermore, it was built at the very peak of Athenian power and glory and it speaks of the city of the Maiden,

  Rich and renowned and violet-crowned,

  Athens the envied of nations.

  Nemesis, of course, lay just around the corner, very much as it did in 1914. When it was new, in all its white marble, red and blue paint and gilded bronze, the Parthenon might have been just a little vulgar, like some of Kipling. But is not gre
at art always a little vulgar? If the Parthenon is a monument of humanism, some of the earlier Doric temples, say those of Paestum, seem to me to express a moving religious feeling. Contrariwise, the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens, I think, conveys very little – except a faint whiff of commercialism, like Birmingham Town Hall. Yet all these different effects were produced by architects working within a single rigid language.

  As with all great art there are many ways of interpreting the Parthenon. What is beyond argument is the magnitude of the achievement. But how did Ictinus do it, working as he did within a strict stylistic convention? Naturally, only one man really knew the answers and that was Ictinus himself; he wrote a book about it, which is now lost. We can, however, make some rather crude analytical observations.

  In the traditional, formal steam yacht, grace and majesty are produced by extreme delicacy and subtlety and harmony in the curves of the hull and the sweep of the sheer – by the exact and loving placing of masts and funnel and superstructure (Plate 22). Mutatis mutandis, this is like the exact and loving placing of words in writing. Ship design differs from the creation of poetry only in its numerate content. So again in Doric architecture, it is the loving attention to detail which is important. Although it appears to be rectangular, there is scarcely a straight line in the Parthenon, and few lines are truly parallel. The seventy-two columns are inclined towards each other in such a way that, if produced, they would all meet at a single point, about five miles up in the sky. The eye, which expects a simple box-like structure, is deceived and enchanted by subtlety after subtlety. Like a clever woman, the Parthenon influences us and bewitches us, though we are scarcely aware of how it is done – or even that it is happening at all (Plate 23).