16/03/10 – A selection of excerpts from the second edition of Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography (1936). Gill’s frequent use of the ampersand (&) retained throughout.

The Theme
Even if a man’s whole day be spent as a servant of an industrial concern, in his spare time he will make something, if only a window box flower garden. (i)

The application of these principles [i.e., the the industrial and the 'humane'] to the making of letters and the making of books is the special business of this book. (ii)

Composition of Time & Place
The abnormality of our time, that which makes it contrary to nature, is its deliberate and stated determination to make the working life of men & the product of their working hours mechanically perfect, and to relegate all the humanities, all that is of its nature humane, to their spare time, to the time when they are not at work. (1f.)

The world is not yet clothed in garments that befit it; in architecture, furniture, clothes, we are still using and wearing things which have no real relation to the spirit which moves our life. (6)

Now the chief and, though we betray our personal predilection by saying so, the most monstrous characteristic of our time is that the methods of manufacture which we employ and of which we are proud are such as make it impossible for the ordinary workman to be an artist, that is to say a responsible workman,  a man responsible not merely for doing what he is told but responsible also for the intellectual quality of what his deeds effect. (7)

When I say no ordinary workman is an artist, no one will say I am lying; on the contrary, everyone will say: Of course not. (ibid.)

It is now clearly understood that modern building must not rely upon ornament, it must rely simply upon grandeur, that is integrity and size. (8f.)

Of beauty there need be no lack, for the beautiful is that which pleases being seen, and those things are pleasing when seen which are as nearly perfect as may be in their adaptation to function. Such is the beauty of bones, of beetles, of well-built railway arches, of factory chimneys (when they have the sense to leave out the ornamental frills at the top), of the new concrete bridge across the Rhine at Cologne, of plain brick walls. (9)

…the ordinary workman has been reduced to the level of a mere tool used by someone else. (10)

…our business is now to design things which are suitable for machines to make. (14)

…how far we are yet from a complete expression of our belief in mechanical perfection and its functional beauty. (15)

There is nothing ugly about an operating-theatre strictly designed for its purpose, and a house or flat designed on the same lines need be neither ugly nor uncomfortable. (18)

…and plain lettering, when properly chosen and rationally proportioned, has all the nobility of plain words. (19)

…the only justification for human work is an intrinsic sanctity. (22)

Lettering
The mind is the arbiter in letter forms, not the tool or the material. (25)

The point that chiefly concerns me is that, with whatever tools or materials or economic circumstance (that is hurry & expense), the artist, the letter-maker, has always thought of himself as making existing forms, & not inventing new ones. (30)

Letters are letters. A is A, and B is B. The letter-maker of the twentieth century has not got to be an inventor of letter forms but simply a man of intelligence & good will. (40)

The printed letter is lettering for us. (41)

One of the commonest forms of unsatisfactoriness is due to the unnecessary and therefore unreasonable mixing of many different sorts of letters on the same page or in the same book. It is a safe rule not to mix different styles of letters on the same page, or different faces of type in the same book. A book printed in an inferior type will be better if that inferior type be strictly kept to than if other and even better types be mixed with it. (ibid.)

When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R? (46)

…seeing the whirl of eccentricity into which modern advertising is driving us, it seems good and reasonable to return  to some idea of normality, without denying ourselves the pleasure and amusement of designing all sorts of fancy letters whenever the occasion for such arises. (48)

…a good clear training in the making of normal letters will enable a man to indulge more efficiently in fancy and impudence. (50)

…in considering what forms constitute this or that letter the mind, not the tool, is the arbiter; and the mind, as regards lettering, is informed by the printed page. (56)

Typography
The slope of italics and their cursivness has been much overdone. (64)

A serious book is one which is good in itself according to standards of goodness set by infallible authority, and a wide appeal is one made to intelligent people of all times and nations. (65)

A print is properly a dent made by pressing; the history of letterpress printing has been the history of the abolition of that dent. (67)

Our quarrel is [...] only with the thing that is neither the one nor the other – neither really mechanically perfect and physically serviceable, nor really a work of art, i.e. a thing made by a man who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in  serving God – to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to mention profits. (69)

…it is instructive to note that in early days of printing, when humane exuberance had full scope, printing was characterized by simplicity and decency. (71)

Our argument here is not that industrialism has made things worse, but that it has inevitably made them different; and that whereas before industrialism there was one world, now there are two. (74)

The beauty that industrialism properly produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the work of men is the beauty of holiness. (ibid.)

Punch-cutting
…an absolute simplicity is the only legitimate, because the only respectable, quality to be looked for in the products of industrialism. (80)

Of Paper and Ink

And machine made paper is perfectly good material so long as it is not made to imitate the appearance of  the hand made. (82)

To be patient is to suffer. By their fruits men know one another, but by their sufferings they are what they are. (84)

There is possibly only one sort of paper, one fount of type and, as he [i.e., the craftsman] makes his ink himself, there is only one sort of ink & two or three different colours. And, paradoxical though it may seem, his legitimate personal fancy has therefore even greater scope than is the case with those who are surrounded to the point of bewilderment by a complicated variety of possible choices. (85)

The good man is the reasonable man, and the good work is a reasonable work. In typography the use of colour is a reasonable and not a fancy matter, & as every extra colour involves an extra printing, the expense alone places a curb upon the exuberance of the craftsman. (86)

The Procrustean Bed
…even spacing is of more importance typographically than equal length. (89)

A book is primarily a thing to be read, and the merely neat appearance of a page of type of which all the lines are equal in length is a thing of no very great value in itself; it partakes too much of the ideas of those who regard books as things to be looked at rather than read. (90f.)

To discover the ‘pleasantly readable’… (94)

The Instrument
It is most important that the workman should not have to watch his instrument, that his whole attention should be given to his work. (97)

…industrialism demands different men and produces different things. (99)

The industrialist makes no claim to produce works of art; he does so nevertheless – when he is not imitating the art works of the past. The artist makes no claim to serve his fellow men; nevertheless he does so – when he is not wholly led astray by the notion that art is self-expression or the expression of emotion. (ibid.)

Those are in error, accordingly, who suppose that when the craftsman strives after technical excellence he is emulating the machine standard. And those are even more grievously mistaken who suppose that if the craftsman neglect his responsibility to exercise good judgment and skill in the actual performance of his work, the consequent lack of uniformity (in the colour of his pages or the weight of his impression) will give to his work the vitality or liveliness which is characteristic of hand work. (100)

The Book
Good book-making, good living – that is to say not what you or I fancy, but what the nature of books and the nature of life really demand. (103)

A book is a thing to be read – we all start with that – and we will assume that the reader is a sensitive as well as a sensible person. (105)

In planning a book the first questions are: who is going to read this, and under what circumstances? (106)

…we may say that the things which should form the shape & proportions of the page are the hand and the eye. (108)

We may say then that the general rule should be: a narrow inner margin, a slightly wider top margin, an outer margin at least double the inner, and a bottom slightly wider than the others; the exact proportions being left to the judgment of the printer. (110)

Books have got to be handled as well as read, and they have got to stand on shelves. (113)

…for the more the human race is degraded by industrialism, the larger is the market for inferior articles; in order to reach a larger and still larger number of buyers you produce a lower and still lower quality of goods. (115f.)

…for ultimately there is no happiness in a world in which things are not as good as they can be. (116)

…the printer whose first concern is quality is not a man of business. (ibid.)

For the present we hold simply to the conviction that the two principles and the two worlds can exist side by side, industrialism becoming more strictly and nobly utilitarian as it recognizes its inherent limitations, and the world of human labour,  ceasing any longer to compete with it, becoming more strictly and soberly humane. (117f.)

But Why Lettering?
…it is simply stupid to make pretense any longer that our letters are a reasonable means for rendering our speech in writing or printing. (120)

We need  a system in which there is a real correspondence between speech, that is to say the sounds of language, & the means of communication. (123)

…think the words, speak the sounds and write something which reasonably presents those sounds. (125)

What I want therefore is, first, some enterprising minister of education who will institute phonography as a compulsory subject in all elementary schools; and, second, some enterprising type founder who will commission me to design a fount of phonographic symbols. (129)

There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools. (132)

Lettering has had its day, Spelling, and philology, and all such pedantries have no place in our world. The only way to reform modern lettering is to abolish it. (133)

Resources and more information
Images on Flickr//

15/01/10 – A selection of excerpts from Moholy-Nagy’s The New Vision (1938).

Foreword

The New Vision was written to inform laymen and artists about the basic elements of the Bauhaus education: the merging of theory and practice in design. (5)

America is the bearer of a new civilization whose task is simultaneously to cultivate and to industrialize a continent. It is the ideal ground on which to work out an educational principle which strives for the closest connection between art, science, and technology. (ibid.)

To reach this objective one of the problems of Bauhaus education is to keep alive in grown-ups the child’s sincerity of emotion, his truth of observation, his fantasy and his creativeness. That is why the Bauhaus does not employ a rigid teaching system. Teachers and students in close collaboration are bound to find new ways of handling materials, tools and machines for their designs. (ibid.)

This book contains an extract of the work in our preliminary course, which naturally develops from day to day while practiced.

The work of the Bauhaus would be too limited if this preliminary course served only Bauhaus students; they, through constant contact with instructors and practical workshop experience, are least in need of its record in book form. More important – one might say that the essential for the success of the Bauhaus idea is the education of our contemporaries outside of the Bauhaus. It is the public which must understand and aid in furthering the work of designers coming from the Bauhaus if their creativeness is to yield the best results for the community.

To prepare this understanding is the main task of The New Vision. It is my hope that it will stimulate those are interested in art, research, design and education. (6)

Introduction

At present in art education we are striving toward the timeless biological elements of expression which are meaningful to all people and useful to all people. This is the first step to a creativeness for everyone, before culture (values of historic development) can be introduced. We are therefore less interested in the immediate production of the “objective” quality of expression usually called “art”, than in the ABC of expression itself. (8)

1. Preliminaries

The future needs the whole man
A specialized education becomes meaningful only if a man of integration is developed along the lines of his biological functions, so he will achieve a natural balance of his intellectual and emotional power instead of on those of an outmoded educational aim of learning unrelated details. (11)

The present system of production
All educational systems are the results of economic structure. (12)

But how about technical progress?
The true source of conflict between life and technical progress lies at this point. Not only the present economic system, but the process of production as well, calls for improvement from the ground up. Invention and systematization, planning and social responsibility must be applied in increased measure to this end. (13)

Not against technical progress, but with it
The solution lies accordingly not in working against technical advance, but – in exploiting if for the benefit of all. Through technique man can be freed, if he finally realizes the purpose; a balanced life through free use of his liberated creative energies. (ibid.)

Only if it is clear to man that he has to crystallize his place as a productive unit in the community of mankind, will he come closer to a true understanding of the meaning of technical progress. (ibid.)

[…] technical progress should never be the goal, only the means. (ibid.)

Biological needs
In this book the word “biological” stands generally for laws of life which guarantee an organic development. (13-14)

Everyone is talented
Every healthy man has a deep capacity for bringing to development the creative energies found in his nature, if he is deeply interested in his work. (15)

Conclusions
[…] the injuries worked by a technical civilization can be combated on two fronts:
1. By the purposive observation and the rational safeguarding of the organic, biologically conditioned function through art, science, technology, education, politics.
2. By the constructive furthering of our overspecialized scientific culture, e.g., relating its results to all single human activities (15)

The responsibility for carrying out the plan lies with each individual
Only the person who understands himself, and cooperates with others in a far-reaching program of common action, can make his efforts count. Material motives may well provide the occasion for an uprising, for revolution, but they can never be the deciding cause. (16)

[…] the right of the individual to a satisfying occupation, work that meets the inner needs, a normal way of life and a real release of human powers. (ibid.)

The task for education
What we need are:
1. actual life examples of strong-minded people, leading others onward;
2. an integration of intellectual achievements in politics, science, art, technology, in all the realms of human activity;
3. centres of practical education.

The “Bauhaus”
The Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, in Germany, attempted to meet this shortcoming, not placing “subjects” at the head of its curriculum, but man, in his natural readiness to grasp the whole of life. (17-18)

Their training this first year is directed toward sensory experiences, enrichment of emotional values, and the development of thought. The emphasis is laid not so much on the differences between the individuals but more on the integration of the common biological features and on the objective scientific and technical facts. This allows a creative approach to every task. (18)

Objectives and methods of Bauhaus education
[…] not the single piece of work, nor the individual, highest attainment, has to be emphasized, but the creation of the commonly usable type, the development of the “standard.”

To attain this goal, scattered individual efforts proved insufficient. In place of isolation there had to be a general concept; instead of solutions in detail, a serious quest for the one essential, for the basic and common procedure of all creative work. In other words, all design has to be approached with the same questions of function, material, production processes, social significance, etc. The recognition of this led to a new mental attitude and became its most significant exponent. Gropius declared that the designer has to think and act in terms of his time. He wished to abolish the supremacy of intellectual work over handwork. He pointed out the great educational value of craftsmanship. “The machine cannot be used as a short cut to escape the necessity for organic experience” (Lewis Mumford). In the Bauhaus, on the technically simple level of handwork, still possible to grasp as a whole, the student can watch the product grow from beginning to end. His glance is directed to the organic whole.(19)

The Preliminary Course
The basic idea of the New Bauhaus education is that everyone is talented, that once the elementary course has brought his emotional and intellectual power into activity, he will be able to do creative, which means his own, genuine work. This does not mean necessarily “art.” Art is the expression of the highest level of a cultural epoch which cannot be forced by any means. But the comprehensive knowledge of materials, tools, and function makes possible for all work such a high quality that an objective standard, not an accidental result, will be obtained. Thus the Bauhaus does not aim at the education of geniuses or even “free artists” in the old sense.

There are too many “free artists” in the world: they are often minor talents with minor problems and without the possibility of ever making a living. The Bauhaus does not want to add to their number. As members of human society the Bauhaus students must learn to face practical as well as spiritual problems. If, however, by taking in all the practical and spiritual material offered to them during their training, some of the Bauhaus students develop into “free” artists, the school certainly will be glad. This will be their own personal achievement. But as long as they are in the Bauhaus, they must see themselves as designers and craftsmen who will make a living by furnishing the community with new ideas and useful products. This is the realistic basis of the workshop training. (21-2)

The specialized workshops
1. Wood, Metal (object design)
2. Textile (weaving, dyeing, fashion)
3. Colour (murals, decorating, wallpaper)
4. Light (photography, motion picture, light display, typography)
5. Modeling (glass, clay, stone, plastics, etc.)
6. Stage (exposition architecture, display)

The Bauhaus trained architect will know by his previous workshop training that only the closest collaboration of art, science and technology guarantees an organic building purposeful in the physical and spiritual sense as well. (22)

2. The material (Surface treatment. Painting)

Sensory training
[…] a grasp of materials through actual experience of its properties, its possibilities in plastic handling, in tectonic creation, in work with tools and machines such as is never attained through book knowledge in the usual school exercises and the traditional courses of instruction (23)

[…] it is indispensable in human development to pass through all the stages of rudimentary experience in every field of sensory activity; thus man little by little attains his own expression and find the forms to use. (ibid.)

Structure
The unalterable manner in which the material is built up […] (35)

Texture
The organically resulting outward surface […] (40)

Surface aspect
[…] the sensorily perceptible result (the effect) of the working process, which shows itself in any treatment of material, as in the upper surface of material which has undergone change through external factors (42)

Massing (mass arrangement)
[…] the regular, rhythmical, or else irregular, massing (45)

It is difficult to note organic relationships in mass arrangement of surface units, the whole being often not a synthesis but a mere addition. (ibid.)

Exercises in surface treatment
Many people will perhaps not be convinced of the justification of such exercises until some practical application is pointed out. […] But we are, in the first period of Bauhaus teaching, much less concerned with such applications than with the fundamental relationship of man to material, which may be built up by such exercises as this. (48)

Education without traditional approach can perform miracles in the use of tools and machines. The Bauhaus students generally become so interested in their tasks while working on their realization that they do not find any difficulty in the use of machines. (59)

Application
Mere observations as to the make-up of the material are of no value. Effective expression of such observations is gained only in their meaningful application – a very different thing from accidental exploitation of one of the characteristics of the organic origin of the material. Purposive application alone can lead to the optimum handling of material. (60)

The basic law
In all fields of creation, workers are striving today to find purely functional solutions of a technical-biological kind: that is, to build up each piece of work solely form the elements which are required for its function.

Of course “function” means here not a pure mechanical service. It includes also the psychological, social and economical components of a given time. It seems that is would be better to use the terms “organized functional” for design. Such a design must be serviceable eve n to function unforeseen while it in use. (61)

The responsibility
Creative powers can be turned into channels other than the purely ornamental – channels organically more correct. (61)

Ornament
[..] past are the arguments of functional and ornamental form; today nature (the organic) provides the functional form that has essential meaning (beauty). (62)

[...] there should be no fear of the “cold intellectualism” of form merely according to purpose. (ibid.)

Where a complete fulfillment of the functional need has been found, there is nothing left for ornamentation. (62)

“Division of surfaces”
Formulas can never be the basis of creation. Real creation needs intuition on the one hand, and conscious analyses, discretion, mature judgment, and consideration of manifold association on the other. (63)

The criterion should never be “art,” or “not art,” but the giving of form to the necessary functional outlets. Whether this may be called “art” today or tomorrow must be a secondary consideration. (64)

Art
The structure, texture and surface treatment values first played a great part in the work of the cubists (Picasso, Braque). They were later taken over by the futurist, and still later, by the other “ists”. They became, for instance, the stimulus for a new typography; they affected photography, advertising, the motion picture, the theater, and have had many repercussions on our whole life today. (67)

Even today our existence seems excessively burdened with accretions from the past when compared with the new plan of life in which all creation springs form inner necessities. (ibid.)

About cubism
[…] there manner of work is better characterized as the resolution of the objective world into its elements, into dissected and newly organized planes which produce subtle but very definite articulation of the surface. (70)

3. Volume (sculpture)

Engineering assemblage as an economical working principle has had a fundamental influence on the new sculptural creation. (110)

An attempt to lift the heavy decorative base (the pedestal). It is an act similar to the elimination of the picture frame, and the bleeding off of the reproductions in a book. (119)

Toys are in many cases sculptures best suited to our time. They often adapt most suggestively technical ideas and explain the processes better than scholarly discussions. (130)

As is the case everywhere, it is true that a wide and comprehensive knowledge of characteristics and elements is less important for creative work than the capacity and the courage to build up new relations among the elements of expression already at hand, to raise them above the commonplace by giving them a new meaning through shifting their meaning. This state of mind is most successfully attained in one relies on the centre of certainty in the active human being, whose existence and responsibility is grounded in the actual – in life.

Without this sureness, elements harmonious in themselves can never grow into an organism. They remain only a series, forming perhaps a rich arabesque, but of no significance in the sense of the building up, of the biological “nourishment” of man. (154)

Not the representation of an object, or even of a feeling, is the real problem here, but the sovereign organization of relationships of volume, of material, of mass, of shape, direction, position and light.

Thus a new reality emerges. (155)

Precepts of function
The biologic make-up of man is the genuine source of each organic expression. (156)

[…] to supplement these mathematical geometric constructions [i.e., old teachings/formulae of proportion] there is need of a thoroughgoing coordination with the laws to which man is subject and upon which his biological make-up depends. (156)

Precepts of elements
Study of elements may fulfill the purpose of a well-stocked chest of tools, of an encyclopedia, but cannot lay the foundations for creation. (158)

[…] the way of using the elements can be directed only by biological necessity. (ibid.)

4. Space (architecture)

Space is reality
Space is a reality in our sensory experience (162)

Space is the position relation of bodies
[…] spatial creation is the creation of relationships of position of bodies (volumes). (163)

The experience of architecture
The road toward experience of architecture thus proceeds first of all over a functional capacity of grasping space which is biologically determined. (178)

Architecture – all the functional parts taken together – must be conceived as a whole. Without this, a building becomes a piecing together of hollow bodies, which may be technically practical, but can never serve in creating space. (178)

The dwelling should not be a retreat from space, but a life in space, in full relationship with it. (180)

[…] architecture will be understood, not as a complex of inner spaces, not merely as a shelter form the cold and from danger, nor as a fixed enclosure, as an unalterable arrangement of rooms, but as an organic component in living as a governable creation for mastery of life. (180-1)

The future conception of architecture must consider and realize beyond the single unit the group, the town, the district, the country, in other words, the whole. (181)

Architecture will be brought to its fullest realization only when the deepest knowledge of human life as a total phenomenon in the biological while is available. (ibid.)

Instead of static: kinetic
Formerly the architect made from visible, measurable and well-proportioned volumes building masses, calling this “space creation.” Bt real spatial experiences rest in simultaneous interpenetration of inside and outside, above and beneath, on the in and out flowing of space relationships, on the often invisible play of forces present in the materials. (184)

Space creation is not primarily a question of the building material
Space creation is today much more an interweaving of parts of spaces, which are anchored for the most part in invisible, but clearly traceable relations, moving in all directions, and in the fluctuating play of forces. (184-8)

The historic sequences
The ocean liners built since the nineties are the precursors of modern architecture. The necessity of attaining maximum space content and complete stability with the smallest possible weight forced the shipbuilding engineer to solutions similar to those the modern architect achieves. (189)

The biological pure and simple taken as the guide
[...] space creation is not limited to a single structure, it is created in all directions, without limitation; boundaries become fluid, space is conceived as flowing; a countless succession of relationships (198)

Openings and boundaries, perforations and moving surfaces, carry the periphery to the centre and push the centre outward. A constant fluctuation sideways and upward, radiant, all-sided, announces to man that he has taken possession, in so far as his human capacities and present conception allow, of imponderable, invisible, and yet omnipresent space. (202)

16/09/09 – Excerpts from Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture (1923), first English translation (Towards a New Architecture) 1927.

Argument

Primary forms are beautiful forms because they can be clearly appreciated. (8)

Forced to work in accordance with the strict needs of exactly determined conditions, engineers make use of generating and accusing lines in relation to forms. They create limpid and moving plastic facts. (ibid.)

Machinery contains in itself the factor of economy, which makes for selection. (10)

The house is a machine for living in. (ibid.)

Standards are a matter of logic, analysis and minute study; they are based on a problem which has been well “stated.” (ibid.)

The Plan proceeds from within to without; the exterior is the result of an interior. (11)

Contour and profile are a pure creation of the mind; they call for the plastic artist. (12)

We must create the mass-production spirit. The spirit of constructing mass-production houses. The spririt of living in mass-production houses. The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses. (ibid.)

If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the house and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the “House-Machine,“ the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful. (12-13.)

The Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture

The Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture – two things that march together and follow one from the other – the one at its full height, the other in an unhappy state of retrogression. (17)

We are to be pitied for living in unworthy houses, since they ruin our health and our morale. (18)

[…] there does exist this thing called architecture, and admirable thing, the loveliest of all. A product of happy peoples and a thing which in itself produces happy peoples. (19)

Our diagnosis is that, to begin at the beginning, the engineer who proceeds by knowledge shows the way and holds the truth. It is that architecture, which is a matter of plastic emotion, should in its own domain begin at the beginning also, and should use those elements which are capable of affecting our senses, and of rewarding the desire or our eyes, and should dispose them in such a way that the sight of them affects us immediately by their delicacy or their brutality, their riot or their serenity, their indifference or their interest; these elements are plastic elements, forms which our eyes see clearly and which our mind can measure. (20)

For the architect we have written our “THREE REMINDERS.”

MASS which is the element by which our senses perceive and measure and are most fully affected.

SURFACE which is the envelope of the mass and which can diminish or enlarge the sensation the latter gives us.

PLAN which is the generator both of mass and surface and is that by which the whole is irrevocably fixed. (21)

Architecture is a thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them. The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US. Architectural emotion exists when the work rings within us in tune with a universe whose laws we obey, recognize and respect. (23)

Three Reminders to Architects

Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture manifests itself. Mass and surface are determined by the plan. The plan is the generator. So much the worse for those who lack imagination! (28)

1. Mass
Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distance and tangible within us and without ambiguity. It is for that reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. […] It is of the very nature of the plastic arts. (31)

The cathedral is not a plastic work; it is a drama; a fight against the force of gravity, which is a sensation of a sentimental nature. (32)

Not in pursuit of an architectural idea, but simply guided by the results of calculation (derived from the principles which govern our universe) and the conception of A LIVING ORGANISM, the ENGINEERS of today make use of the primary elements and, by coordinating them in accordance with the rules, provoke in us architectural emotions and thus make the work of man in unison with universal order. (33)

2. Surface
[…] an architectural structure is a house, a temple or a factory. The surface of the temple or the factory is in most cases a wall with holes for doors and windows; these holes are often the destruction of form; they must be made an accentuation of form. (39)

Not in pursuit of an architectural idea, but guided simply by the necessities of an imperative demand, the tendency of the engineers of today is towards the generating and accusing lines of masses; they show us the way and create plastic facts, clear and limpid, giving rest to our eyes and to the mind pleasure of geometric forms. (41)

3. Plan
A plan is not a pretty thing to be drawn, like a Madonna face; it is an austere abstraction; it is nothing more than a n algebrization and dry-looking thing. (46-7)

The plan carries in itself the very essence of sensation. (49)

We are living in a period of reconstruction and of adaptation to new social and economic conditions. In rounding this Cape Horn the new horizons before us will only recover the grand line of tradition by a complete revision of the methods in vogue and by the fixing of a new basis of construction established in logic.

In architecture the old bases of construction are dead. We shall not rediscover the truths of architecture until new bases have established a logical ground for every architectural manifestation. A period of 20 years is beginning which will be occupied in creating these bases. A period of great problems, a period of analysis, of experiment, a period also of great aesthetic confusion, a period in which a new aesthetic will be elaborated.We must study the plan, the key to this evolution. (61-2)

Regulating Lines

There is no such thing as primitive man; there are primitive resources. The idea is constant, in full sway from the beginning. (66)

In order to construct well and distribute your efforts to advantage, in order to obtain solidity and utility in work, units of measure are the first condition of all. (ibid.)

He [the builder/primitive man] has imposed order by means of measurement. In order to get his measurement he has taken his pace, his boot, his elbow or his finger. By imposing the order of his foot or his arm, he has created a unit which regulates the whole work; and this work is on his own scale, to his own proportion, comfortable for him, to his measure. It is on the human scale. It is in harmony with him; that is the main point. (67-8)

A unit gives measure and unity; a regulating line is a basis of construction and satisfaction. (68)

A supreme determinism illuminates for us the creations of nature and gives us the security of something poised and reasonably made, of something infinitely modulated, evolved, varied and unified. (70)

A regulating line is an assurance against capriciousness. (71)

The regulating line is a satisfaction of a spiritual order which leads to the pursuit of ingenious and harmonious relations. It confers on the work the quality of rhythm. (ibid.)

The choice of regulating line is on e of the decisive moments of inspiration, it is one of the vital operations of architecture. (ibid.)

Eyes Which Do Not See

1. Liners

We have acquired a taste for fresh air and clear daylight. (85)

Architecture is stifled by custom. (86)

A house is a machine for living in. (89)

Our epoch is fixing its own style day by day. (ibid.)

The art of our period is performing its proper functions when it addresses itself to the chosen few. Art is not a popular thing, still less and expensive toy for rich people. Art is not an essential pabulum except for the chosen few who have need of meditation in order that they may lead. Art is in its essence arrogant. (96)

A seriously-minded architect, looking at it as an architect (i.e., a creator of organisms), will find in a steamship his freedom from an age-long but contemptible enslavement to the past. (97)

2. Airplanes

The War was an insatiable “client,” never satisfied, always demanding better. The orders were to succeed at all costs and death followed a mistake remorselessly. We may then affirm that the airplane mobilized invention, intelligence and daring: imagination and cold reason. The same spirit that built he Parthenon. (101)

The lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the enunciation of the problem and which led to the successful realization. When a problem is properly stated, in our epoch, it inevitably finds its solution. (102)

Architecture is the art above all others which achieves a state of platonic grandeur, mathematical order, speculation, the perception of the harmony which lies in emotional relationships. This is the AIM of architecture. (102-3)

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM (106ff)

Let us shut our eyes to what exists. (106)

THE MANUAL OF THE DWELLING (114ff)

Every modern man has the mechanical sense. The feeling for mechanics exists and is justified by our daily activities. This feeling in regard to machinery is one of respect, gratitude and esteem. Machinery includes economy as an essential factor leading to minute selection. There is a moral sentiment in the feeling for mechanics. The man who is intelligent, cold and calm has grown wings to himself.Men – intelligent, cold and clam – are needed to build the house and to lay out the town. (117-19)

3. Automobiles

It is necessary to press on towards the establishment of standards in order to face the problem of perfection. (123)

A standard is necessary for order in human effort. (125)

The establishment of a standard involves exhausting every practical and reasonable possibility, and extracting from them a recognized type conformable to its functions, with a maximum output and a minimum use of means, workmanship and material, words, forms, colours, sounds. (127)

Here we have the birth of style, that is to say the attainment universally recognized, of a state of perfection universally felt. (128)

Culture is the flowering of the effort to select. Selection means rejection, pruning, cleansing; the clear and naked emergence of the Essential. (ibid.)

Poetry lies not only in the spoken or written word. The poetry of facts is stronger still. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with talent and with tact create a poetic fact. (132)

Architecture is governed by standards. Standards are a matter of logic, analysis and precise study. Standards are based on a problem which has been well stated. Architecture means plastic invention, intellectual speculation, higher mathematics. Architecture is a very noble art.Standardization is imposed by the law of selection ansd is an economic and social necessity. Harmony is a state of agreement with the norms or our universe. Beauty governs all; she is a purely human creation; she is the overplus necessary only to men of the highest type. (135-8)

Architecture

1. The Lesson of Rome

(i) Ancient Rome
[…] they [the Romans] constructed a superb chassis, but they designed deplorable coachwork […] (145)

It [Hadrian’s Villa] is the first example of Western planning on the grand scale. (ibid.)

Absence of virtuosity, good arrangement, a single idea, daring and unity in construction, the use of elementary shapes. A sane morality. (146-7)

(ii) Byzantine Rome
This quite tiny church of S. Maria, a church for poor people, set in the midst of noisy and luxurious Rome, proclaims the noble pomp of mathematics, the unassailable power of proportion, the sovereign eloquence of relationship. (149)

There exists one thing which can ravish us, and this is measure or scale. (151)

(iii) Michaelangelo
Intelligence and passion; there is no art without emotion, no emotion without passion. Stones are dead things sleeping in the quarries but the apses of St. Peter’s are a drama. Drama lies all round the key achievements of humanity. (152)

(iv) Rome and ourselves

2. The Illusion of Plans

Placing myself entirely at this one angle of vision I commence by drawing attention to this vital fact: a plan proceeds from within to without, for a house or a palace is an organism comparable to a living being. I shall speak of the architectural elements of the interior. I shall pass on to arrangement. In considering the effect of building s in relation to a site, I shall show that here too the exterior is always an interior. By means of various fundamental elements which will be clearly shown in diagrams, I can demonstrate the illusion of plans, this illusion which kills architecture, ensnares the mind and creates architectural trickery; this is the fruit of violating undeniable truths, the result of false conceptions or the fruit of vanity. (166-7)

THE PLAN PROCEEDS FROM WITHIN TO WITHOUT

ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE INTERIOR
Our elements are vertical walls, the spread of the soil, holes to serve as passages for man of for light, doors or windows. The holes give much or little light, make gay or sad. The walls are in full brilliant light, or in half shade or in full shade, giving an effect of gaiety, serenity or sadness. Your symphony is made ready. The aim of architecture is to make you gay or serene. (171)

ARRANGEMENT
To establish order is to begin to work. Architecture is based on axes. (173)

Architectural buildings should not all be placed upon axes, for this would be like so many people all talking at once. (175)

Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading of aims, the classification of intentions. (176)

THE EXTERIOR IS ALWAYS AN INTERIOR
To sum up, in architectural ensembles, the elements of the site itself cone into play by virtue of their cubic volume, their density and the quality of the material of which they are composed, bringing sensations which are very definite and very varied (wood, marble, a tree, grass, blue horizons, near or distant sea, sky). The elements of the site rise up like walls panoplied in the power of their cubic coefficient, stratification, material, etc., like the walls of a room. Walls in relation to light, light and shade, sadness, gaiety or serenity, etc. Our compositions must be formed of these elements. (177-9)

TRANSGRESSION
But a man has only two eyes at a level of about 5 feet 6 inches above the ground, and can only look at one point at a time. (182-3)

It must not be forgotten, in drawing out a plan, that it is the human eye that judges the result. (184)

3. Pure Creation of the Mind

From what is emotion born? From a certain relationship between definite elements: cylinders, an even floor, even walls. From a certain harmony with the things that make up the site. From a plastic system that spreads its effects over every part of the composition. From a unity of idea that reaches from the unity of the materials used in the unity of the general contour. (189, caption: The Propylea)

Emotion is born of unity of aim; of that unperturbed resolution that wrought its marble with the firm intention of achieving all that is most pure, most clarified, most economical. Every sacrifice, every cleansing had already been performed. The moment was reached when nothing more might be taken away, when nothing would be left but these closely-knit and violent elements, sounding clear and tragic like brazen trumpets. (190, caption: The Propylea)

From this we get a possible definition of harmony, that is to say a moment of accord with the axis which lies in man, and so with the laws of the universe, -a return of universal law. (196)

The objects in nature and the results of calculation are clearly and cleanly formed; they are organized without ambiguity. It is because we see clearly that we can read, learn and feel their harmony. I repeat: clear statement is essential in a work of art. (ibid.)Clear statement, the giving of a living unity to the work, the giving it a fundamental attitude and a character: all is a pure creation of the mind. (198)

Architecture only exists when there is a poetic emotion. Architecture is a plastic thing. (190)

Architecture is the skilful, accurate and magnificent play of masses seen in light; and contours are also and exclusively the skilful, accurate and magnificent play of volumes seen in light. Contours go beyond the scope of the practical man, the daring man, the ingenious man; they call for the plastic artist. (202)

Mass-Production Houses

Mass-production doors, windows, cupboards […]. All these units, which big industry can supply, are based on a common unit of measurement: they can be adapted to one another exactly. […] A further gain, of the greatest importance, is architectural unity, and by means of the module, or unit of measurement, good proportion is assured automatically. (219, caption: Le Corbusier, 1915: Interior of a reinforced concrete house)

A house will no longer be this solidly-built thing which sets out to defy time and decay, and which is an expensive luxury by which wealth can be shown; it will be a tool as the motor-car is becoming a tool. The house will no longer be an archaic entity, heavily rooted in the soil by deep foundations, built “firm and strong,” the object of the devotion on which the cult of the family and the race has so long been concentrated.

Eradicate from your mind any hard and fast conception in regard to the dwelling-house and look at the question from an objective and critical angle, and you will inevitably arrive at the “House-Tool,” the mass-production house, available for everyone, incomparably healthier thatn the old kind (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same sense that the working tools, familiar to us in our present existence, are beautiful. (219-45)

State the problem clearly t yourself; determine the type of house according to the needs required; resolve the problem as those of railway carriages, tools, etc. are resolved (220, caption: Le Corbusier, 1922: Artist’s house)

As to beauty, this is always present when you have proportion; and proportion costs the landlord nothing, it is at the charge of the architect! (223, caption: Le Corbusier, 1921: Mass-production house)

And one can be proud of having a house as serviceable as a typewriter. (ibid.)

Unity in detail and in large general lines. (247)

Architecture or Revolution

Specialization ties man to his machine; an absolute precision is demanded of every worker, for the article passed on to the next man cannot be snatched back in order to be corrected and fitted; it must be exact in order that it may play, by that very reason, its part as a detailed unit which will be required to fit automatically into the assembling of the whole. (254-5)

The spirit of the worker’s booth no longer exists, but certainly there does exist a more collective spirit. (255)

There is no real link between our daily activities at the factory, the office or the bank, which are healthy and useful and productive, and our activities in the bosom of the family which are handicapped at every turn. The family is everywhere being killed and men’s minds demoralized in servitude to anachronisms. (257)

The advent of a new period only occurs after long and quiet preparatory work. (261)

There reigns a great disagreement between the modern state of mind, which is an admonition to us, and the stifling accumulation of age-long detritus. (268)

Sources and more information
More images//

18/05/09 – Excerpts from Jost Hochuli’s Detail in Typography: Letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines, linespacing, columns (2008):

Basics
This little book is concerned with those questions of typography that can be considered as belonging to the area of micro- or detailed-typography.

While macrotypography – the typographic layout – is concerned with the format of the printed matter, with the size and position of the columns of type and illustrations, with the organization of the hierarchy of headings, subheadings and captions, detail typography is concerned with the individual components that graphic or typographic designers like to neglect, as they fall outside the area that is normally regarded as ‘creative’.

When reference is made in what follows to  formal matters, this does not primarily refer to ‘aesthetic’ issues in the sense of personal aesthetic freedom or personal taste, but rather to those visible elements that enable the optimum reception of the text. As this is the aim of every piece of typography involving large amounts of text, a concern with formal elements becomes a concern with issues of legibility and readability. Thus, in detail typography, formal elements have little to do with personal preference. (7)

The reading process
As experienced readers read, their eyes spring jerkily along the lines. These brief movements are known as saccades, and they alternate with fixed periods lasting 0.2-0.4 seconds. A line is perceived in a series of saccades, followed by a large saccade as the eye jumps back to the left to start the next line. Information is only absorbed during the fixed period. With average type size, as used for books, a saccade represents 5-10 letters, or about 1-2 words in English. A saccade may begin or end within a word. Of the up to 10 letters, only 3-4 are focused on sharply during the fixed period: the rest are perceived by the eye indistinctly and in their context. If the sense of the text is not clear, the eye jumps back, in regression saccades, to recheck what has already been ‘read’. (8)

Word-images that have already been stored in a reader’s visual memory are read more quickly than unfamiliar ones. (ibid.)

“The registering of eye movements can be used to objectively assess the legibility of a text. The same text will be read at differing speeds if systematic variations are made to the length of line, the size and shape of the type, and the contrast between the colour of the letters and their background. The size and frequency of the saccades depends on teh form of the printed text.  These variables, which can be measured objectively during the act of reading, correlate very well with the subjective impression fo the greater or lesser legibility of a text … .” These researchers confirm – not invariably, but surprisingly frequently – long-known rules of typography. (9)

The letter
The reception of everything written – including typography – takes place in two ways: firstly, in the act of reading itself, that is the conversion in the brain of the perceived succession of letter, and secondly as a (mostly unconscious) visual perception, that triggers associations with what has previously been seen and arouses feelings. (10)

Because the design of their types was too extravagant, and too closely reflected the fashion of the time, many private press and bibliophile editions now look old-fashioned and outmoded. Many of the types designed in our own day will fare no better.

The same fate as befell the romantic, individualistic artists’ types of the turn of the century also befell the apparently objective types from the Bauhaus and its adherents, and for the same reason. Here too, form came first – form as such, and with no regard to optimum readability; simplicity of letterform was the ultimate ambition. Furthermore, the type designers focused principally on the isolated individual letters, and less so on letters integrated into words. (11)

It is almost impossible to define a good, timeless type as such. All that can be done is point to a few particularly conspicuous characteristics. (13)

While the capitals have retained in their basic structure the static, lapidary appearance of inscriptions, the lowercase, developed from them over hundreds of years, shows the dynamic characteristics of flowing handwritten forms, even in the typographic form. (13)

Characteristics of good type: i) each letter must have a familiar form ii) all letters of the alphabet must have the same style iii)  right proportions of capitals  and lowercase iv) proper relationship between capitals and lowercase, in terms of both size and weight (13-14)

Like all two-dimensional shapes perceived by the eye, letters too are subject to the laws of optics. The decisive element in assessing their formal qualities is thus not any kind of measuring instrument, but the healthy human eye. (15)

Optical facts for designing type:

1) For a given height, a circle and a triangle appear smaller than a square. For them to seem to be the same height, they must extend slightly beyond the top and bottom lines.

2) The mathematically equal horizontal division of an area produces an upper half that appears larger than the lower half. To produce two halves of apparently equal size, the dividing line must lie above the mathematical centre, in what is known as the optical centre.

3) For a given weight of line, a horizontal line appears heavier than a vertical line.To achieve optically balanced verticals and horizontals, which appear to be of the same weight, the horizontal must be somewhat narrower. This applies not only to straight lines but also to  curves, which must indeed be somewhat broader at the broadest horizontal point than the corresponding verticals. For optical reasons, right-leaning diagonals somewhat broader, and left-leaning diagonals somewhat narrower than the verticals. Nor are all verticals of equal length equally wide: the more horizontal connections, the narrower the vertical.

4) Where curves intersect with straight lines or with other curves, or where two diagonals meet, lumps will occur, which, unless corrected, will disfigure the letter and make the composition appear blobby.

5) Small sizes of type need to be proportionally wider than larger sizes. (18)

As such, it [italic type] remains the most elegant and yet clearest option for emphasizing individual words or whole pieces of text, whether simply on account of its structural difference with the text type, or, in addition, because of its differing tonal value. (21)

Not till the nineteenth century did ‘false’ italics occur, under the influence of drawn lithographic lettering. Of all the characteristics of true italics, they have preserved only the secondary characteristic of the slope, but not their fundamental structure.

Today it is possible to ‘italicize’ a type; that is, to electronically slope an existing roman type. The results are unsatisfactory, as there is not way of taking account of optical considerations. If a typeface lacks an italic, and there is really no alternative to ‘italicizing’ the roman, the slope should not be steeper than 10°, otherwise the distortions will be too great. (ibid.)

The word
With an easily readable typeface the individual letters are always designed with regard to their impact as parts of a word. While being clearly differentiated, they must be capable of fitting together as harmoniously as possible into whole words. (23)

With any printed matter, the printed are interacts with the unprinted area. This applies equally for the individual line, for the individual words and for the individual letters. In the same way that the whole page should have a consistent, even, but not boring grey tonality. (ibid.)

The space between letters is a function of their interior spaces, or counters. The smaller the counter [of the typeface], the smaller the space between letters, and vice versa. (ibid.)

Letterspacing that appears lighter than the median lightness of the counters of the letters concerned produces, in lowercase setting, word-images that appear to fall apart; too tight letterspacing produces blotchy, uneven words. (25)

Things are somewhat less straightforward with capitals. Here, the starting point is a minimum space, that can be increased more or less, depending on the situation. The minimum space is determined by the lightness of the biggest counters (C, D, G, O, Q): if any of the letters causes a ‘hole’ to appear in the word, the spacing is too tight. (ibid.)

Light – the brightness of the unprinted surface – flows from above and below into the interior spaces of the letters and the space between them. The light coming from above is more effective than that coming from below. This means that the n of a sanserif typeface must be somewhat wider than the u of the same typeface, if both letters are to appear equally wide. Similarly, the space between I and A must be smaller than the space between I and V (given that A and V have the same angle).  (26-7)

sidebearings: in a letter’s standard width, it is the space to the left and right

kerning tables: manufacturer-created character groups for letter combinations for which the standard spacings are altered (e.g., Av Ay ‘A L’ Ta Ve Va Wo Ya Ye f) f! [f gg gy gf qj)

ligatures: two or three joined-together letters (e.g., fi, fl, ff, ffi and ffl)

The line
Wordspaces, the spaces before and after punctuation, as well as line length, are important matters for typographers. (32)

measure: length of line

Typographers recommend an optimum of between 50 and 60 or between 6o and 70 characters per line. Tinker claims that a 10pt type with 2pt interlinear spacing is equally readable at measures between 14 and 31 picas (about 6 to 13cm) [...]. (ibid.)

What applies to letterspaces also applies to wordspaces: they too are a function of the counters of the individual letters: teh smaller these are, the smaller the wordspaces; the larger the counters, the larger the wordspaces.

The generally applicable rule for wordspacing is: as much as necessary, as little as possible. A clear but not excessive space will normally be around a quarter of the notional body size, e.g. 2.5 points for a 10pt type. (32-4)

Unjustified setting can be produced in two ways: 1) Unjustified setting with no word breaks and no further attention. Depending on the nature of the work, this rather crude, unpolished form may be entirely appropriate. 2) Unjustified setting with reasonable word breaks and an appropriate ‘hyphenation zone’ (the distance between the longest and the shortest lines). This generally has about the same number of characters in the line, or not many fewer, as justified setting. (34-5)

hard rag: unjustified setting with wide hyphenation zone

soft rag: unjustified setting with narrow hyphenation zone

Linespacing, the column
The longer the line, the more linespacing it needs, for a given typeface and type size. Equally, lighter typefaces – generally those with large counters – need more linespacing than darker ones. The internal form of the letters thus influences not only the letter- and wordspacing, but also the linespacing. For typographers, the linespacing is an important means for changing the ‘colour’, the grey tone of a piece of composition. (47)

The use of line spaces to separate paragraphs breaks up the page, requires too much space, and creates problems when a paragraph ends at the bottom of a page. In every case, indents are the only certain indicators of a new paragraph. (ibid.)

If a page includes passages of text in a smaller size of type, with less interlinear space, the main text that follows must resume the main baseline grid. Whether or not such inserts are indented will depend on the overall typographic design. (49-53)

In typography, details can never be considered in isolation. (53)

The qualities of type
[...] over and above their primary and essential task of acting as a visual means of transport for language, typefaces are also able to communicate atmosphere. (54)

The impression created by any one typeface can only be assessed when all the typefaces concerned are used to set the same text, in the same size, to the same measure, with the same linespacing, and are printed by the same method, with the same ink and inking, on the same paper, with the same margins. (58)

A theoretically less attractive typeface can, through the proper choice and skillful deployment of all the other elements, be so enhanced that, as part of a typographic whole, it hits the right note. For typographers, analyses of the impression created by typefaces are thus often purely theoretical: they neglect the sheer complexity of typographic practice. They also harbour the danger that their results may incline people  to apply prescribed solutions. This is something that creative typographers guard against. (ibid.)

26/04/09 – Excerpts from Tenugui, Pie Books (2007), Japan. Tenugui are traditional Japanese cotton hand-towels featuring a wide range of designs and motifs.

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