The Look of Architecture

 

 The Look of Architecture

by Witold Rybczynski

Oxford University Press, 2001

ISBN: 0-19-513443-5

(Amazon)

First read by the author in 2003, reread 2023

'"The Sages say: One who has never seen Herod's building has never seen a beautiful building in his life. From what was it built? Rabba said: with stones of white and green marble. Some say of blue, white, and great marble. Alternate courses would have an edge protruding, so that they could be plastered. He considered cladding it in gold, but the Rabbis said to him, "Leave it, since it is more beautiful, as it looks like the waves of the sea."' (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 4a) 

Rashi: The sea pattern delights the eye. 

Maharsha: Waves remind you of the sea, which remind you of God, as in how we understand the color of azure (as per BT Sotah 17a, Menahot 43b). 

Herod thoroughly renovated the Second Temple in Jerusalem and redid it with classical architecture. (Corinthian, according to Josephus.) The Talmud describes an exterior cladding detail. As the Sages tell it, Herod wished to clad it in gold, but was instead encouraged to leave the stones bare. According to the Maharsha, this was so that the wall detail would carry a deeper symbolic meaning that jived with the overall composition of the Temple. 

Thus far, the books I've highlighted were about discrete subjects: stone work, air conditioning, bridges, etc. This book is much more theoretical, discussing architecture and style. Rybczynski writes with panache and fills his book with witty lines. He argues that style is important to architecture, but that style must also reflect underlying theories: "Style without content quickly degenerates into caricature, like a speaker who makes grand gestures and rhetorical flourishes, but has nothing to say." Cladding the Temple with gold might be a flourish, but it has less to say than exposed stone reminiscent of the sea. 

Much as his landsman Moshe Safdie did in Private Jokes in Public Places, Rybczynski pushes back against post-Modernism. He argues that style should not be a dirty word among architects. At the same time, architecture should not simply be art. "The end," he writes, "must direct the operation," meaning architects must keep the general populace in mind and not merely seek to fulfill artistic inclinations. A building, after all, must be lived in and is part of a living city. It cannot simply be whimsy. 

Along the way, Rybczynski highlights the work of several contemporary architects, each with very different styles, but with styles nonetheless. He argues that these styles help anchor their work and allow them create more substantial projects. He similarly singles out a series of buildings along Bryant Park, each designed in a different style yet each espousing some ethos. He points to several canonical architects, like Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, and talks about how each had a style they felt was morally right. And in their age, they may have been correct. "Buildings are sometimes referred to as timeless, as if this were the highest praise one could bestow. That is nonsense. The best buildings, like the Chrysler or the New York Public Library or the RCA, are precisely of their time. That is part of the pleasure of looking at buildings from the past." I can only imagine that archaeologists around the world would agree. 

I bought this book at the Harvard Book Store in the summer of 2003 while living in Cambridge. The small volume was a quick and enjoyable read at a time when I was just starting to read architecture books for fun. It was the first of many of Witold Rybczynski's books that I have read. Five years later, when he came to Jerusalem to research Makeshift Metropolis, he was kind enough to autograph my copy. This was the fourth time I've read it, and each time it encourages me to aspire for more as an architect - better details, better meanings, better influence. 

A quick note about the book jacket: I think of this as a classic scheme for the cover of an architecture book. It has sketched skyscrapers, with a black, white, and grey color scheme, and a splash of red for the author's name. It was absolutely one of the books I pulled off the shelf when designing the cover of my book, ArchitecTorah.