Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Friedrich --

Just to mess with all our minds for a few seconds, I want to pass along this passage from "The Most Beautiful House in the World," Witold Rybczynski's terrific small book about building his own house. What's architecture? And who's an architect?

It would be convenient if architecture could be defined as any building designed by an architect. But who is an architect? Although the Academie Royale d'Architecture in Paris was founded in 1671, formal architectural schooling did not appear until the nineteenth century. The famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1816; the first English language school, in London, in 1847; and the first North American university program, at MIT, was established in 1868. Despite the eixstence of professional schools, for a long time the relationship between schooling and practice remained ambiguous. Not one of the three best-known architects of the twentieth century -- Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier -- received a formal architectural education. The great Renaissance buildings, for example, were designed by a variety of non-architects: Brunelleschi was trained as a goldsmith, Michelangelo as a sculptor, Leonardo da Vinci as a painter, and Alberti as a lawyer; only Bramante, who was also a painter, had formally studied building. These men are termed architects because, among other things, they created architecture -- a tautology that explains nothing.

It's a mess, and ain't that great.

Rybczynski's book can be bought here.

Best,

Michael

Which is why I always wonder where Le Corbusier got off dedicating a book "To Authority"!!!

I love to tweak the panties of the FLW/Corbu worshiping UofA Arch grads I know, it's very very easy to do (just say ANYTHING that's other than totally worshipful of them, and you'll get a rise...very intensity to suit your taste in the moment :-)

But that's when I'm feeling impish.

Posted by: David Mercer on September 29, 2003 7:20 AM

And David Mercer never, ever feels impish ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on September 29, 2003 8:46 AM






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