Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Having spoken of plan as the basis of design, I should wish to conclude
this lecture by suggesting also, what has never to my knowledge been
prominently brought forward, that the plan itself, apart from any
consideration of what we may build up upon it, is actually a form of
artistic thought, of architectural poetry, so to speak. If we take three
such plans as those shown in Figs. 26, 27, and 28, typical forms
respectively of the Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic plans, we certainly can
distinguish a special imaginative feeling or tendency in each of them.
In the Egyptian, which I have called the type of "mystery," the plan
continually diminishes as we proceed inward. In the third great
compartment the columns are planted thick and close, so as to leave no
possibility of seeing through the building except along a single avenue
of columns at a time. The gloom and mystery of a deep forest are in it,
and the plan finally ends, still lessening as it goes, in the small and
presumably sacred compartment to which all this series of colonnaded
halls leads up. In the Greek plan there is neither climax nor
anti-climax, only the picturesque feature of an exterior colonnade
encircling the building and surrounding a single oblong compartment. It
is a rationalistic plan, aiming neither at mystery nor aspiration. In
the plan of Rheims (Fig. 28) we have the plan of climax or aspiration;
as in the Egyptian, we approach the sacred portion through a long avenue
of piers; but instead of narrowing, the plan extends as we approach the
shrine. I think it will be recognized, putting aside all considerations
of the style of the superstructure on these plans, that each of them in
itself represents a distinct artistic conception. So in the plan of the
Pantheon (Fig. 29), this entrance through a colonnaded porch into a vast
circular compartment is in itself a great architectural idea,
independently of the manner in which it is built up.
[Illustration: Figs. 29 through 34]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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