Rethinking Technology A Reader in Architectural Theory 1st Edition William Braham
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- 5. Rethinking Technology A Reader in Architectural Theory 1st Edition William Braham Digital Instant Download Author(s): WilliamBraham ISBN(s): 9780415346535, 0415346533 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 3.10 MB Year: 2007 Language: english
- 7. RETHINKING TECHNOLOGY Rethinking Technology is an essential reference for all students of architecture, design and the built environment; providing a convenient single source for all the key texts in the recent literature on architecture and technology. The essays included are chronicles, manifestos, reflections, and theories produced by architects and architectural writers. Arranged in chronological order of original publication, these essays allow comparisons to be made between writings produced in a similar historical context and reveal the discipline’s long and close attention to the experience and effects of new technologies, from the early twentieth century to the present day. With the ever increasing pace of technological change, the fact and condition of change itself has become the subject of architectural discussion, made manifest in organic and dynamic analogies and the use of terms like process, flow, and emergence. Most architects still use the word technology to refer to the different means and methods of building, however in recent years the term has become synonymous with the digital realm and the whole apparatus of computerized information flow. With that change, the tools of design and construction have become a matter of processes, networks, and systems. The editors preface each text with a short introduction explaining the significance of the essay in relation to the broader developments charted by the book. Cross-references are also made between individual texts in order to highlight important thematic connections across time. William W.Braham is associate professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written widely on environmental technologies, combining technical analysis with historical and theoretical accounts. He is the author of Modern Color/Modern Architecture: Amedee Ozenfant and the genealogy of color in modern architecture (2002). Jonathan A.Hale is associate professor and director of research in architecture at the School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham. He is the author of Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory (2000). John Stanislav Sadar is an architect and partner in the multidisciplinary design firm little wonder.
- 9. RETHINKING TECHNOLOGY A READER IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY EDITED BY WILLIAM W.BRAHAM AND JONATHAN A.HALE WITH JOHN STANISLAV SADAR LONDON AND NEW YORK
- 10. First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Selection and editorial matter, William W.Braham and Jonathan A.Hale; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rethinking technology: a reader in architectural theory/edited by William W.Braham and Jonathan A.Hale. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Architecture and technology. 2. Architecture—Philosophy. I.Braham, William W., 1957– II. Hale, Jonathan A. NA2543.T43R47 2007 720.1–dc22 2006014792 ISBN 0-203-62433-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-34653-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-34654-1 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-62433-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-34653-5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-34654-2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-62433-3 (ebk)
- 11. CONTENTS Preface viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction xii 1901: Frank Lloyd Wright The Art and Craft of the Machine 1 1914: Antonio Sant’ Elia Manifesto of Futurist Architecture 15 1915: Patrick Geddes Paleotechnic and Neotechnic 19 1923: Le Corbusier Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture 28 1928: Siegfried Giedion Construction. Industry. Architecture 33 1929: Le Corbusier Architecture: The Expression of the Materials and Methods of our Times 38 1929: Richard Buckminster Fuller 4D Time Lock 42 1929: Knud Lönberg-Holm Architecture in the Industrial Age 47 1932: Hugo Häring The House as an Organic Structure 51 1934: Lewis Mumford Technical Syncretism and Toward an Organic Ideology 53 1937: Karel Honzík Biotechnics: Functional Design and the Vegetable World 58 1939: Frederick J.Kiesler On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design 61 1941: Siegfried Giedion Industrialization as a Fundamental Event 75 1948: Siegfried Giedion The Assembly Line and Scientific Management 77 1950: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Technology and Architecture 106 1954/1962: Team 10 The Doorn Manifesto 108 1954: Richard Neutra Survival Through Design 110 1957: Konrad Wachsmann Seven Theses 119 1959: Peter Collins The Biological Analogy 121 1960: Peter Reyner Banham Functionalism and Technology 130
- 12. 1960: William Katavolos Organics 140 1964: Christopher Alexander The Selfconscious Process 143 1964: Marshall McLuhan Housing: New Look and New Outlook 153 1965: Peter Reyner Banham A Home is not a House 159 1969: Richard Buckminster Fuller Comprehensive Propensities 167 1969: James R.Boyce What is the Systems Approach? 172 1970: Peter Cook Experiment is an Inevitable 179 1972: Superstudio Microevent/Microenvironment 186 1973: Leopold Kohr Velocity Population 195 1973: Paolo Soleri Function Follows Form (Structure Before Performance) 198 1976: Ruth Schwartz Cowan The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century 203 1977: Kisho Kurokawa The Philosophy of Metabolism 218 1979: Philip Steadman What Remains of the Analogy? The History and Science of the Artificial 232 1981: Alan Colquhoun Symbolic and Literal Aspects of Technology 252 1982: Luis Fernández-Galiano Organisms and Mechanisms, Metaphors of Architecture 256 1985: Steve Ternoey The Patterns of Innovation and Change 276 1987: Martin Pawley Technology Transfer 280 1988: Bruno Latour Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer 294 1988: Peter McCleary Some Characteristics of a New Concept of Technology 310 1992: Joseph Rykwert Organic and Mechanical 322 1994: Stewart Brand Shearing 334 1995: Rem Koolhaas Speculations on Structures and Services 338 1995: Félix Guattari Machinic Heterogenesis 342 1997: Francis Duffy Time in Office Design 356 1997: Paul Virilio The Third Interval 358 1999: Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos Techniques: Network Spin, and Diagrams 367
- 13. 1999: Ken Yeang A Theory of Ecological Design 371 2000: Bernard Cache Digital Semper 378 2002: Manuel De Landa Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture 388 2002: David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi Surface Architecture 394 2002: William McDonough and Michael Braungart A Brief History of the Industrial Revolution 402 2002: William J.Mitchell E-Bodies, E-Buildings, E-Cities 406 2003: SLA Changing Speeds 416 2004: Manuel Castells Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age 418 Bibliography 435 Index 438
- 14. PREFACE The possibility of this volume grew out of conversations at the University of Pennsylvania over a decade ago. For a brief and remarkably intense period Ivan Illich taught a weekly seminar in the PhD program in Architecture headed by Joseph Rykwert. Like so many moments of intensity, it was surprisingly short lived, though its topics and debates continue to reverberate among those fortunate enough to have participated. Illich brought his broad experience to questions fostered by Marco Frascari’s studies of representation, David Leatherbarrow’s writing about materials and assemblies, Peter McCleary’s seminar on the philosophy of technology, and Rykwert’s depth of knowledge and curiosity about everything. Our initial proposal was to prepare a reader of essays explicitly on the philosophy of technology, but the recent and rapid appearance of several excellent anthologies on this subject inspired us to focus more directly on the architectural literature, which offered its own variations on the question of technology. The first lists of essays numbered in the hundreds, so for each text included in this reader there were at least five equally compelling pieces that had to be left out. The project would not have been possible without the patient and fastidious work of John Sadar, a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His own doctoral research on the effects of technological innovations in early twentieth-century architecture has added another important dimension to this collection. Some credit also must go to all of our students at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Nottingham, whose questions, enquiries, and interests have often led us to places we might not otherwise have considered. For their enthusiasm, patience, and above all confidence in this project our thanks go to Caroline Mallinder, Georgina Johnson, and the publishing team at Routledge/Taylor and Francis. On a more personal note, appreciation for support, ideas, and inspiration should also be expressed to: Andrew Ballantyne, Iain Borden, Ted Cullinan, Jocelyn Dodd, Thomas Hughes, Don Ihde, David Leatherbarrow, Detlef Mertins, Peter McCleary, Jane Rendell, Joseph Rykwert, Adam Sharr, and Jeremy Till. Thanks always to the staff at the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania, the finest circulating library of architecture. William W.Braham Jonathan A.Hale
- 15. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following for permissions to reproduce material in this book. Alexander, Christopher, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, copyright © 1964 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1992 by Christopher Alexander. Banham, Reyner “A Home is Not a House,” first published in Art in America, April 1965. Copyright © Art in America, Brandt Publications. Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, copyright © 1980 MIT Press. Berkel, Ben van and Caroline Bos, Move: Techniques, copyright © 1999. UN Studio and Goose Press. Boyce, James R., “What is the Systems Approach?” copyright © 1969 Architecture/VNU Publications. Brand, Stewart, How Buildings Learn, copyright © 1994 Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Buckminster Fuller, R., 4D Time Lock, copyright © 1929 the Estate of R.Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller, R., Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, copyright © 1969 the Estate of R.Buckminster Fuller. Cache, Bernard, “Digital Semper,” copyright © 2000 MIT Press, Anyone Corporation. Castells, Manuel, “Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age,” copyright © 2004 Routledge Publishing, Inc. Collins, Peter, “The Biological Analogy,” first published in the Architectural Review, December 1959. Copyright © Architectural Review/EMAP Communications. Colquhoun, Alan, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, copyright © 1981 MIT Press. Cook, Peter, Experimental Architecture, copyright © 1970 Rizzoli. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century,” copyright © 1976 Johns Hopkins University Press—Journals. De Landa, Manuel, “Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture,” copyright © 2002 Manuel De Landa. Fernández-Galiano, Luis, Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy, copyright © 2000 MIT Press. This work originally appeared in Spanish under the title El fuego y la memoria. Sobre arquitectura y energiá, copyright © 1991 Alianza Editorial, S.A., Madrid. Giedion, Siegfried, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete, copyright © 1995 J.Paul Getty Trust. Giedion, Siegfried, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History, copyright © 1948 Oxford University Press, Inc.
- 16. Giedion, Siegfried, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, copyright © 1941, 1949, 1954, 1962, 1967, 1969, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, copyright © 1997 by William J.Callaghan, copyright © 1982 by Andreas Giedion and Verena Clay-Giedion. Guattari, Felix, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm, English translation © 1995 Power Institute, Paul Bains, and Julian Pefanis. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press. Häring, Hugo, “The House as an Organic Structure,” from Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, copyright © 1964 by Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt/M-Berlin. English translation copyright © 1970 Lund Humphries, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Honzík, Karel, “Biotechnics: Functional Design and the Vegetable World,” first published in the Architectural Review, January 1937. Copyright © Architectural Review/EMAP Communications. Katavolos, William, “Organics.” from Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, copyright © 1964 by Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt/M- Berlin. English translation copyright © 1970 Lund Humphries, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Kiesler, Frederick, “On Correlation and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design,” The Architectural Record, September 1939, 60–75. Kohr, Leopold, The Inner City, copyright © 1989 Y Lolfa Cyf, Talybont, Dyfed, Wales. http://www.ylolfa.com/ Koolhaas, Rem, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large, copyright © 1995 Monacelli Press and Rem Koolhaas. Kurokawa, Kisho, Metabolism in Architecture, copyright © 1977. Latour, Bruno, “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door- Closer,” copyright © 1988 University of California Press—Journals. Le Corbusier, “Architecture: The Expression of the Materials and Methods of our Times,” copyright © 2006 Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, copyright © 1960. Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT. Leatherbarrow, David and Mohsen Mostafavi, Surface Architecture, copyright © 2002 MIT Press. McCleary, Peter, “Some Characteristics of a New Concept of Technology,” copyright © 1988. McDonough, William and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, copyright © 2002 Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, copyright © 1964 MIT Press. Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, “Technology and Architecture,” from Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, copyright © 1964 by Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt/M-Berlin. English translation copyright © 1970 Lund Humphries, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Mitchell, William, “E-Bodies, E-Buildings, E-Cities,” copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons.
- 17. Mumford, Lewis, Technics and Civilization, copyright © 1934 Harcourt. Copyright renewed © 1962 by Lewis Mumford. Neutra, Richard, Survival Through Design, copyright © 1954 Dion Neutra, Architect and © Richard and Dion Neutra Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E.Young Research Library, UCLA. Pawley, Martin, “Technology Transfer,” first published in the Architectural Review, September 1987. Copyright © Architectural Review/EMAP Communications. Rykwert, Joseph, “Organic and Mechanical,” copyright © 1992. Sant’ Elia, Antonio and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture,” from Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, copyright © 1964 by Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt/M-Berlin. English translation copyright © 1970 Lund Humphries, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Soleri, Paolo, Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit, copyright © 1973 by Cosanti Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Steadman, Philip, The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied Arts, copyright © 1991. Superstudio, “Description of Microevent/Microenvironment,” reprinted by permission from Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, copyright © 1972 Museum of Modern Art and Gian Piero Frasinelli. Virilio, Paul, “The Third Interval,” copyright © 1997 Editions Galilée. Wachsmann, Konrad, “Seven Theses,” from Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, copyright © 1964 by Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt/M-Berlin. English translation copyright © 1970 Lund Humphries, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Wright, Frank Lloyd, “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” copyright © 1992 Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, AZ. Yeang, Ken, The Green Skyscraper: The Basis for Designing Sustainable Intensive Buildings, copyright © 1999. Considerable effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders and to secure replies prior to publication. However, this has not always been possible. The editor and publishers apologize for any errors and omissions. If notified, the publishers will endeavor to correct these at the earliest opportunity
- 18. INTRODUCTION William W.Braham Jonathan A.Hale “sometime during the 1980s the technological society which began in the fourteenth century came to an end. Now I recognize that dating epochs involves interpretation and perhaps some fuzziness in assigning beginnings and endings; but, nevertheless, it appears to me that the age of tools has now given way to the age of systems, exemplified in the conception of the earth as an ecosystem, and the human being as an immune system.”1 Ivan Illich > A reader in architectural theory This collection of essays provides an introduction to the literature on architecture and technology. It is offered to architects and architecture students for whom technology and design have largely been separated in school curricula, in trades and professional associations, and in design practice itself. It is intended to support courses in architectural technology, architectural theory, and also the philosophy of technology. It should also be of interest to professionals involved in teaching, or reconsidering their work in the light of current theoretical debates. These essays reveal the discipline’s long and close attention to the experience and effects of contemporary technology, from the early twentieth century to the current moment. The collection is also intended for those interested in technology as a discrete historical, philosophical, or sociological subject, and for whom the architectural literature will be less well known. It is notable that in the time this architectural reader was being prepared two large new readers in the philosophy of technology were published, suggesting the growing maturity of the field, and also making the purpose of this collection even clearer.2 With all the historical and philosophical writing on technology contained in those publications, architecture is only occasionally considered, and usually as an example among other examples. The essays included in the collection are chronicles, manifestos, reflections, and theories offered by architects and architectural writers in their encounter with technology. However, a comprehensive collection of such writings would fill many such volumes, and so much of our task has been to rethink the topic itself.
- 19. > Why rethink technology? Through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries architects have largely become technocrats. Even as the elite of the profession have secured their status as visionaries and artists, the majority of architects spend their time processing the flow of information that guides the assembly of complex technical constructions. In that respect, an architect of the early nineteenth century would have more in common with the Roman architect Vitruvius than he would with a practitioner of the twentieth or twenty-first century. Properly speaking, architects have always been concerned with technology, but since the effects of the first industrial revolution became widespread in the early nineteenth century, the technology encountered by architects has changed in scope and kind, becoming a restless and accelerating process of transformation. To rethink technology at the beginning of the twenty-first century means reconsidering the strong claims made about technology—utopian and dystopian—by the modernist and postmodernist architects and historians of the twentieth century, as the actual impacts of that technology were encountered. With the ever increasing pace of technological change, the fact and condition of change itself has become the subject of architectural discussion, made manifest in organic analogies and the use of terms like process, flow, and emergence. For most architects the word technology still means the different means and methods of building, however, in recent decades, the term has become synonymous with computers and the whole apparatus of networked information flow. With that change, the shift described by Ivan Illich in the opening quotation has become wholly palpable: architecture and technology or, more precisely, the tools of design and construction, have become a matter of systems. The goal of this collection is to chart the emergence of that “age of systems” within the architectural discourse. But even that task would extend well into the pre-modern period and would require many more essays than seemed manageable, so we settled on a selective survey beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. All of this begs a central question: in what ways is architecture technological? Certainly the process of building is now wholly technological, as is the society in which buildings are conceived, financed, and evaluated. Ultimately, rethinking technology and architecture in the age of systems means rethinking the practical and ethical dimensions of change, development, and evolution in architecture. > Philosophy of technology As technology changes so do society, the environment, and the practice of architecture. The globalizing “network society” has certainly forced architects to rethink the relationship of their work to new modes of production and construction, new patterns of movement and settlement, and new cultural priorities. Since at least the mid-nineteenth century—Karl Marx provides the classic example—it has been commonly assumed that technologies change society in more or less predictable ways; that technology is both
- 20. autonomous (evolving) and deterministic in its effects. Through the twentieth century philosophers and historians have debated the nature of that relationship, leading in recent decades to a more nuanced view about their interaction and the degree to which technology itself is “socially constructed,” or at least culturally embedded and co- evolving. It is usual to describe these twentieth-century developments in terms of a first and second generation of philosophers of technology. The first generation could be traced back to Comte, Marx, Ruskin, and other nineteenth-century figures who were all in some way reacting—both positively and negatively—to the impact of the industrial revolution on the social and cultural conditions of the time. By the early twentieth century these ideas were beginning to harden into a sustained critique of technological utopianism, most famously in the writings of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was the author of perhaps the single most important—though not always the most popular—statement on the “essence” of modern technology, in his 1953 essay The Question Concerning Technology. Subsequent writing in the 1950s and 1960s led to the emergence of a distinct and identifiable field, including the urban and architectural writers Lewis Mumford and Siegfried Giedion, alongside philosophers and sociologists like Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, Ivan Illich, and Jurgen Habermas. What unites this disparate group of thinkers is the belief in the autonomy of technological development—a sense that society’s tools had turned against their creators in a kind of Frankenstein scenario—locking us irrevocably within a technological “system” (to use Ellul’s term) or a “megamachine,” as Mumford described it. Another common factor within these broadly dystopian critiques was their neglect of empirical evidence in favor of a “high-altitude” theoretical analysis. The second generation of philosophers of technology sought to correct this imbalance by delving inside the “black box” in an attempt to uncover the complex interactions between technical and cultural factors. This reaction took many different forms. Authors such as Albert Borgmann have extended Heidegger’s insights into the details of everyday life, while others have extended the insights of Dewey or Pierce. What has since become known as the “social constructivist” approach to technology grew out of a series of specific social and anthropological case-studies: writings based on the historical and ethnographic analysis of particular technological developments which attempt to show the extent to which they are driven by social and cultural forces. Significant figures in this field—which first came to prominence in the early 1980s—include Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Thomas Hughes, Michel Callon, and Bruno Latour. What they sought to chart was the often unpredictable and occasionally counterintuitive rise of new technical innovations and their subsequent success or failure. The adoption and popularity of novel technologies may often be based more on social, cultural, and psychological factors than on “pure” scientifically testable qualities such as efficiency, economy, and reliability. Current thinking in this expanding field is still influenced by both of these approaches, whose differences might simply be characterized as philosophical versus historical or sociological, though they are equally distinguished by the object of their study, whether it is technology, modern science, engineering, industry, or society itself. Such differences are legible in the names of the different academic departments, societies, and journals that embrace these subjects. For example: the Society for the History of Technology, founded in 1958, publishes the journal Technology and Culture; the American
- 21. Sociological Association organized a research committee on the Sociology of Science and Technology in 1966; the Society for Philosophy and Technology, formed in 1976, publishes the journal Téchne; while the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, formed in 1981, publishes the EASST Review. The Dutch philosopher of technology, Hans Achterhuis, and his colleagues have argued the field has taken an “empirical turn,” resisting large philosophical statements in favor of investigations of the details and complex interactions surrounding even the smallest technological artifact or condition.3 It is in that spirit that this collection from the architectural literature might fit into the broader history and philosophy of technology. > What is a system? The opening quotation by Ivan Illich was drawn from his discussion about the changing notion of contingency, particularly the idea of instrumental causality introduced in the twelfth century, which he argued had inaugurated and characterized the age of tools or of technology. However, he did not welcome the age of systems. He viewed it as an even more difficult condition within which to live a good life, though he saw its emerging attributes clearly and also recognized the degree to which ideas often precede their realization. For him, a system was different from a tool because “when you became the user of a system, you became part of the system.”4 The groundwork for the description of interconnected, bottom-up, self-organizing entities has been emerging for generations— strongly visible in concepts such as the “eco-system” which appear in the 1930s, or more recently in the understanding of the human immune system—but this idea is actually discernible as far back as Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century notion of the “invisible hand” of the free market economy (conceived during the Scottish Enlightenment).5 The immediate importance of a collection of essays dedicated to tracing the changing nature of technology in architecture is to penetrate beyond broad generalizations about technology, society, and architecture. It is necessary to understand the broad historical conditions and actual processes of their realization. Radical changes were encountered by architects in every aspect of their work and they tried many different formulations to manage and understand them. Principle among them were various kinds of organic and biological analogies, which gained increasing precision as cybernetics, general systems theory, and complexity analysis matured. It is important at the outset to recognize the degree to which those same developments were changing the understanding of organic life itself. In other words, as new paradigms of explanation develop they are applied equally to buildings, bodies, and machines.
- 22. The collection is also meant to help reframe the architect’s question of how best to work in such conditions. That becomes both an ethical and a practical question. As Reyner Banham requested in the second edition of The Architecture of the Well- Tempered Environment (1984), “this book must no longer be filed under Technology.” 1 Ivan Illich, The River North of the Future: the Testament of Ivan Illich, as told to David Cayley (Toronto: House of Anasazi Press, 2005), p. 77. 2 David M.Kaplan (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Technology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004); Robert C.Scharff and Val Dusek (eds), Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2003). 3 Hans Achterhuis (ed.), American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001). 4 Illich, River North, p. 78. 5 Ronald Hamowy, “The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order.” Journal of the History of Philosophy Monographs (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987).
- 23. 1901 Frank Lloyd Wright The Art and Craft of the Machine We chose to begin this collection with an essay by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), because it was conveniently given as a lecture at the very beginning of the twentieth century. It also provides a useful introduction to the themes encountered by designers in the late nineteenth century, for whom the term “Machine” served as shorthand for the social and aesthetic effects of the first technological revolution. The lecture was Wright’s original manifesto, and he returned to its themes and phrases throughout his long career. It was delivered as a lecture on March 1, 1901 at the Hull House in Chicago at the height of his first period of productivity and fame, and offers his critique of the Arts and Craft movement. He summarizes their protest against the machine and even paraphrased Victor Hugo on the effect of the printing press on architecture— “The One Will Kill the Other”—from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. In the context of this collection, the biological themes that he uses toward the end of the essay are critical, extending the ancient analogy between bodies and buildings into the dynamic processes and flows of the modern, industrial city. For the rest of his career Wright invoked the notion of an organic architecture to explain his work, using the term in many different senses. However, in the compelling phrase, “blind obedience to organic law,” we see the first glimmer of the age of systems. As we work along our various ways, there takes shape within us, in some sort, an ideal—something we are to become—some work to be done. This, I think, is denied to very few, and we begin really to live only when the thrill of this ideality moves us in what we will to accomplish. In the years which have been devoted in my own life to working out in stubborn materials a feeling for the beautiful, in the vortex of distorted complex conditions, a hope has grown stronger with the experience of each year, amounting now to a gradually deepening conviction that in the Machine lies the only future of art and craft—as I believe, a glorious future; that the Machine is, in fact, the metamorphosis of ancient art and craft; that we are at last face to face with the machine— the modern Sphinx—whose riddle the artist must solve if he would that art live—for his nature holds the key. For one, I promise “whatever god may be”1 to lend such energy and purpose as I may possess to help make that meaning plain; to return again and again to the task whenever and where need be; for this plain duty is thus relentlessly marked out for the artist in this, the Machine age, although there is involved an adjustment to cherished gods, perplexing and painful in the extreme; the fire of many long-honored ideals shall go down to ashes to reappear, phoenix like, with new purposes. The great ethics of the Machine are yet, in the main, beyond the ken of the artist or student of sociology; but the artist mind may now approach the nature of this thing from experience, which has become the commonplace of his field, to suggest, in time, I hope, to prove, that the machine is capable of carrying to fruition high ideals in art—higher than the world has yet seen!
- 24. Disciples of William Morris cling to an opposite view. Yet William Morris himself deeply sensed the danger to art of the transforming force whose sign and symbol is the machine, and though of the new art we eagerly seek he sometimes despaired, he quickly renewed his hope. He plainly foresaw that a blank in the fine arts would follow the inevitable abuse of new-found power, and threw himself body and soul into the work of bridging it over by bringing into our lives afresh the beauty of art as she had been, that the new art to come might not have dropped too many stitches nor have unraveled what would still be useful to her. That he had abundant faith in the new art his every essay will testify. That he miscalculated the machine does not matter. He did sublime work for it when he pleaded so well for the process of elimination its abuse had made necessary; when he fought the innate vulgarity of theocratic impulse in art as opposed to democratic; and when he preached the gospel of simplicity. All artists love and honor William Morris. He did the best in his time for art and will live in history as the great socialist, together with Ruskin, the great moralist: a significant fact worth thinking about, that the two great reformers of modern times professed the artist. The machine these reformers protested, because the sort of luxury which is born of greed had usurped it and made of it a terrible engine of enslavement, deluging the civilized world with a murderous ubiquity, which plainly enough was the damnation of their art and craft. It had not then advanced to the point which now so plainly indicates that it will surely and swiftly, by its own momentum, undo the mischief it has made, and the usurping vulgarians as well. Nor was it so grown as to become apparent to William Morris, the grand democrat, that the machine was the great forerunner of democracy. The ground plan of this thing is now grown to the point where the artist must take it up no longer as a protest: genius must progressively dominate the work of the contrivance it has created; to lend a useful hand in building afresh the “Fairness of the Earth.” That the medicine has dealt Art in the grand old sense a death-blow, none will deny. The evidence is too substantial. Art in the grand old sense—meaning Art in the sense of structural tradition, whose craft is fashioned upon the handicraft ideal, ancient or modern; an art wherein this form and that form as structural parts were laboriously joined in such a way as to beautifully emphasize the manner of the joining: the million and one ways of beautifully satisfying bare structural necessities, which have come down to us chiefly through the books as “Art.” For the purpose of suggesting hastily and therefore crudely wherein the machine has sapped the vitality of this art, let us assume Architecture in the old sense as a fitting representative of Traditional-art and Printing as a fitting representation of the Machine. What printing—the machine—has done for architecture—the fine art—will have been done in measure of time for all art immediately fashioned upon the early handicraft ideal. With a masterful hand, Victor Hugo, a noble lover and a great student of architecture, traces her fall in Notre-Dame. The prophecy of Frollo, that “the book will kill the edifice,” I remember was to me as a boy one of the grandest sad things of the world. Rethinking technology 2
- 25. After seeking the origin and tracing the growth of architecture in superb fashion, showing how in the Middle Ages all the intellectual forces of the people converged to one point—architecture—he shows how, in the life of that time, whoever was born poet became an architect. All other arts simply obeyed and placed themselves under the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the great work. The architect, the poet, the master summed up in his person the sculpture that carved his façades, painting which illuminated his walls and windows, music which set his bells to pealing and breathed into his organs—there was nothing which was not forced in order to make something of itself in that time, to come and frame itself in the edifice. Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the principal writing—the universal writing of humanity.2 In the great granite books begun by the Orient, continued by Greek and Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages wrote the last page. So to enunciate here only summarily a process, it would require volumes to develop; down to the fifteenth century the chief register of humanity is architecture. In the fifteenth century everything changes. Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only more resisting than architecture, but still more simple and easy. Architecture is dethroned. Gutenberg’s letters of lead are about to supersede Orpheus’ letters of stone. The book is about to kill the edifice. The invention of printing was the greatest event in history. It was the first great machine, after the great city. It is human thought stripping off one form and donning another. Printed, thought is more imperishable than ever—it is volatile, indestructible. As architecture it was solid; it is now alive; it passes from duration in point of time to immortality. Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly, with a canal hollowed out beneath its level, and the river will desert its bed. See how architecture now withers away, how little by little it becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and people withdrawing from it. The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century, the press is yet weak, and at most draws from architecture a super-abundance of life, but with the beginning of the sixteenth century, the malady of architecture is visible. It becomes classic art in a miserable manner; from being indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman; from being true and modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which we call the Renaissance. It is the setting sun which we mistake for dawn. It has now no power to hold the other arts; so they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the architect, and take themselves off, each in its own direction. One would liken it to an empire dismembered at the death of its Alexander, and whose provinces become kingdoms. Sculpture becomes statuary, the image trade becomes painting, the canon becomes music. Hence Raphael, Angelo, and those splendors of the dazzling sixteenth century. 1901: Frank Lloyd Wright 3
- 26. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 27. Parapet defended by hoarding, showing elevation, section through hourd and coursière, and method of construction
- 28. Laval The first improvements in defence, designed to meet an improved attack, consisted in the protection of the ramparts. Behind the outer parapet of the wall was the rampart-walk, a level path along the top of the wall, which was sometimes protected by a parapet in the rear. From an early date in stone fortification, it was customary to break the upper portion of the parapet at intervals by openings called crenellations, through which it was possible for an archer to command a limited part of the field at right angles to the wall.95 The
- 29. crenellations, however, were narrow compared with the unbroken parapets between them, and, even in advanced examples of fortification like the ramparts of Aigues-Mortes (77) and Carcassonne (78), these unbroken pieces are still very broad, although they are pierced by arrow-slits. Even allowing for an arrow-slit between each crenellation, the foot of the wall could not be commanded from behind the parapet. In time of siege, then, it became customary to supply the walls with projecting wooden galleries, known as hoardings or brattices (hourds, bretèches), which could be entered through the crenellations. The joists of the flooring passed through holes at the foot of the parapet, and were often common to the outer gallery and an inner gallery (coursière) covering the rampart- walk. Both galleries had a common roof.96 In the floor of the outer gallery, between the joists, were holes, through which missiles could be directed upon the besiegers at the foot of the wall; while slits in the outer face were still available for straight firing. The defenders of the ramparts were thus able to work under shelter, with some command both of the field and the foot of the wall. The defensive advantages of this scheme are obvious; but the galleries were also liable, although the usual precautions for their covering were taken, to destruction by fire, whether from arrows tipped with burning tow, or the more formidable red-hot stones flung by catapults. In any case, the catapults were a serious menace to their solidity.
- 30. Coucy; parapet of donjon The donjon and the towers of the enceinte were also bratticed at the rampart-level.97 Indications of this practice are common in military architecture abroad. The cylindrical donjon of Laval (80), a work of the twelfth century, is covered with hoarding which is supposed to be contemporary with the tower. The stone corbels which carried the hoarding of the great thirteenth-century tower of Coucy remain; and a row of plain arches pierced in the tall parapet show how the gallery was entered from the roof (81). The
- 31. somewhat earlier round tower at Rouen was restored by Viollet-le- Duc on the lines of Coucy, with a conical roof and hoarding. The inner wall at Carcassonne and the curtain of Loches, among other examples, keep the holes in which the joists of the hoarding were fixed; and the walls of Nuremberg are still covered with inner galleries or coursières. The practice of supplementing stone walls with timber defences lasted till a late period; but, even before the end of the twelfth century, corbelled-out parapets with machicolations appeared in isolated instances. In subsequent chapters we shall see how military masons and engineers applied their architectural skill to meet the problems which siege-engines of greater strength and tactics more finished than those of the past forced upon them. We have now to deal with earlier efforts, which we have to some degree anticipated.
- 33. CHAPTER V THE BEGINNING OF THE STONE CASTLE Map of principal castles in north-east England
- 34. In Domesday Book some fifty castles are mentioned by name or implication; and the number was largely increased during the next hundred years. In view, however, of the large number of temporary private strongholds which came into being during the twelfth century, it is difficult to estimate the number of permanent castles until, in the later part of the century, Henry II. regulated and restrained the efforts of private owners to guard their property with fortresses. The castles included in Domesday do not represent the whole number which existed at that period; and of such important castles as Colchester and Exeter, which we know to have been founded before 1086, there is no mention. To estimate the strategic plan which governed the foundation of castles at its full value, we must therefore turn for a moment to the later period at which the defence of England by a connected system of these strongholds had been more thoroughly achieved. Here also, it is not altogether easy, in view of the destruction of older castles by Henry II., and the foundation of new ones at a later epoch, to estimate the exact state of the castles of England at the end of the twelfth century.98 But, taking one special district, we may at least gain an approximate notion of its lines of defence as they existed about the year 1200. This is the north-eastern district of England, containing the main strategic approach to Scotland, and crossed by the rivers which descend eastwards to the sea. This was the scene of the rebellion of the Mowbrays and the invasion of William the Lion in 1174, in consequence of which four important castles at least, those of Kinnard’s Ferry on the lower Trent, Thirsk and Northallerton in the vale of Mowbray, and Kirkby Malzeard, on the highlands above the right bank of the Ure, were demolished.99 The chief castles of this district will be found to guard the line of the rivers. On the Trent were Nottingham, on the north bank, and the bishop of Lincoln’s castle of Newark,100 on the south; while the greater part of the lower valley of the river was commanded at some distance by the strongly-placed castles of Belvoir and Lincoln. On the borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, Tickhill101 stood in advance of the Don, while the narrow passage of the Don, five miles west of
- 35. Doncaster, was guarded by Conisbrough. These castles defended the approach from the high land on the west; the marshy country north and east of Doncaster, towards the Humber, although it often proved a refuge for freebooters, needed no permanent garrison. South of the Calder, opposite Wakefield, stood Sandal. To the east, below the junction of the Calder and the Aire, was Pontefract, in a position of great strength and importance.102 There was no great castle on the Wharfe, although Harewood guarded the south bank of the river between Otley and Tadcaster, and at Tadcaster itself there was a castle, of which little is known; Cawood castle was simply a manor- house of the archbishops of York.103 On the Ouse, almost in the centre of the shire, were the two castles of York, at the head of the tideway. Knaresborough was west of York, on the north bank of the Nidd. Each of the dales of the North Riding had its strong castle. In Wensleydale was Middleham, south of the Ure. Richmond, from its cliff at the mouth of Swaledale, commanded a vast tract of country, reaching to the Hambleton hills and the forest of Galtres, north of York. Barnard Castle stood in a strong position on the Durham bank of the Tees. The castles of the eastern part of the North Riding were Skelton and Castleton, both in Cleveland, and belonging to the house of Bruce. Helmsley stood at the entrance of Ryedale; Pickering and Malton were on the Derwent, and Scarborough guarded the coast. South of Scarborough, in the East Riding, the one castle of importance at this date was Skipsea, on the low coast-line of Holderness, between Flamborough and Spurn heads. Returning to the border of Durham, and crossing the Tees, we find Brancepeth and Durham on the Wear. On the south bank of the Tyne was Prudhoe in Northumberland: north of the Tyne was the great fortress of Newcastle. Most of the castles and small strongholds of Northumberland were the growth of a later age. The principal castles at this period were Mitford on the Wansbeck, Warkworth on the Coquet, Alnwick on the Alne, Wark and Norham on the Tweed, and Bamburgh and Holy Island, castles on the seaboard. This list might be extended, but the most important fortresses east of the Pennine chain are included in it, and from it the strategic geography
- 36. of this important district can be readily recognised. Of the thirty-four castles in this list, ten, including the gateway-tower at Newark, had rectangular tower-keeps, of which nine remain; Conisbrough and Barnard Castle (87) had cylindrical tower-keeps. Of the rest, in most cases, as at Sandal (86), the mounts remain, and in a few instances, as at Skipsea, there are remains of a shell-keep. The shell-keeps of Lincoln and Pickering are still excellent examples of their type. The masonry at York, Pontefract, and Knaresborough belongs to a later period; and in almost all instances, where masonry remains, it bears trace of substantial later additions. Sandal Castle; Plan
- 37. Barnard Castle; Plan It will be noticed that castles which guarded passes through hilly districts were generally placed, like Middleham and Richmond, in comparatively open country at the foot of the pass. This was the case with Welsh castles like Brecon and Llandovery, or the tower of Dolbadarn, below the pass of Llanberis. The isolated position at the head of a pass was not easily victualled, nor was it so useful as the situation on more open ground, from which, as at Brecon or Middleham, a larger extent of mountain country could be commanded. Trecastle (44), at the top of the pass between Brecon and Llandovery, has already been mentioned as a site which was probably abandoned early: the tract which it commanded is limited compared with that within reach of Brecon, the point towards which all the valleys of the neighbourhood converge. In places where a castle formed part of the defences of a walled town, it was usually placed upon the line of the wall, so that the wall formed for some distance part of its curtain. This can be well seen at Lincoln, where the castle occupied the south-west angle of the older Roman city. The castle of Ludlow is in the north-west angle of the
- 38. town, the wall of which joined it on its north face and at its south- west corner. At Carlisle the castle filled up an angle of the town, the town walls meeting its south curtain at either end. In such cases, the castle, while defending the town, was also protected from it by a ditch, across which a passage was furnished by a drawbridge. The castle of Bristol stood upon the isthmus, east of the town, between the streams of the Avon and Frome, and, in this strong position, was joined by the city wall at either extremity of its west side. In 1313, when the citizens were in rebellion, they cut off the castle from the city by building a new wall on that side.104 In the case of Bristol, the building of the castle made some alterations in the town wall necessary, as time went on, but, from the beginning, the castle occupied its place in the regular enceinte. If, at York, the castles were at first built, as seems to be the case, outside the defences of the town, the circuit was soon extended to include the castle, at any rate, upon the right bank of the river. Although the castle of Southampton is almost entirely gone, the points of junction of its curtains with the west wall of the town are quite clear. Similarly, the position of castles such as Shrewsbury, Leicester, and Nottingham, or close to the enceinte of the town, can be traced, although little is left of the walls. In foreign walled towns like Angers or Laval, the castle formed, as in England, a portion of the outer defences. In later castles like Carnarvon and Conway, the same relation to the plan of the town was preserved. There are exceptions, of which the chief is the Tower of London, within the Roman, but outside the medieval city wall. Chepstow is also outside the town, between which and the castle is a deep ravine: but in this case the town was of a growth subsequent to the foundation of the castle. A distinction must be drawn between castles founded in connection with fortified towns, in which the castle formed part of a general scheme of defence, as at Bristol and Oxford, and castles under the protection of which towns, like Chepstow, grew up, and were subsequently fortified. A good example of this latter class is Newcastle, in which the relations of town and castle are exactly opposite to those at Chepstow. When the castle was founded by the Conqueror, the place, once garrisoned
- 39. by the Romans, and for a time inhabited by a colony of English monks, was probably an inconsiderable village. The town which grew up on the site took its name from the castle, and was walled in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The walls, however, were brought down to the banks of the Tyne at some distance east and west of the castle, which was thus contained entirely within their circuit. At Norwich, a place of no great importance before the Conquest, the castle is also entirely within the line of the old city wall. One of the best examples of the connection between a walled town and a castle is at Launceston, where the borough of Dunheved grew up within a narrow area which was virtually the outer ward of the strong hill-fortress. The establishment of a castle upon a permanent site was followed, sooner or later, by the building of stone fortifications. This work was often very gradual. We have seen that even a castle so important as that of York retained part of its timber stockade as late as 1324. This, however, was an exceptional case. The walls and towers of medieval castles show, as might be expected, a considerable variety of masonry; but the epoch at which their fortification in stone became general may be said to be the third quarter of the twelfth century. In 1155 Henry II. resumed castles and other royal property into his own hands, and ordered the destruction of the unlicensed castles which had risen during the civil wars of the previous reign.105 This step was followed unquestionably by much activity in strengthening the defences of the castles which were left. At the same time, there are many substantial remains of stone buildings in castles earlier than this era. Stone donjons or keeps were certainly exceptional in England before the reign of Henry II., although there are a few important examples of an earlier date. It cannot be disputed, however, that a certain number of castles were provided with a stone curtain-wall106 and other stone buildings not long after the Conquest. Curtain-walls thus built would follow the line of the earthen bank surrounding the bailey, and take the place
- 40. of the timber stockade. They were at first of the simplest form. An edict of the council of Lillebonne in 1080 laid down the rule, so far as the Norman duchy was concerned, for constructing the defences of private castles; and, although the details refer primarily to the ordinary timber structure, they also have a bearing on the construction of early curtains of stone. No ditch was to be deeper than the level from which earth could be thrown by the digger, without other help, to the soil above. The stockade was to follow a course of straight lines, and to be without propugnacula and alatoria —i.e., projecting towers and battlements, and rampart-walks or galleries.107 The earliest type of curtain-wall would be strictly in accordance with these rules—a strong wall of stone surrounding the bailey, and climbing the sides of the mount to join the defences of the donjon. We read of the destruction by Louis VI. of France of the stone fortification with which the house of the lord of Maule was surrounded;108 and the edict already quoted applies to fortifications on level ground, and includes, not merely castles, but strong private houses, which might not necessarily follow the castle plan. The edict, however, proceeds to forbid altogether the construction by private persons of castles on rocks or islands. The reason of this is obvious. Such isolated strongholds might become, in the hands of private owners, a centre of rebellion against the suzerain. In 1083, Hubert of Maine held out successfully against the Conqueror in his rock castle of Ste-Suzanne (Mayenne) on the Erve, “inaccessible by reason of the rocks and the thickness of the surrounding vineyards.”109 William II. in 1095 besieged Robert Mowbray in his castle on the well-nigh impregnable rock of Bamburgh, with considerably better fortune.110 Such rocks formed, as it were, natural mounts which made the construction of the ordinary mount- and-bailey castle upon them unnecessary. The hardness of the soil, moreover, made the construction of earthworks difficult or impossible. The natural method of defence would be to raise a stone wall which enclosed the stronghold.
- 41. BAMBURGH CASTLE: great tower
- 42. BAMBURGH CASTLE
- 43. Richmond; great tower Neither at Ste-Suzanne nor at Bamburgh (91) is there existing stonework earlier than the twelfth century. Of the castle of Saint- Céneri-le-Gérei (Orne), which we know to have been fortified with stone walls before the end of the eleventh century,111 only indistinguishable masses of masonry remain to-day. On the other hand, there are a certain number of castles on rocky and isolated sites, the walls of which may be fairly attributed, in whole or part, to the later half of the eleventh century. The most important example is
- 44. Richmond castle in Yorkshire (91), on a high promontory of rock above the Swale. The shape of the enclosure is triangular. The most conspicuous feature of the castle is the splendid square tower or donjon, which was completed between 1170 and 1180, and stands on the north side of the enceinte, at the head of the approach from the town. The curtain, however, west of the donjon, contains “herring-bone” masonry,112 and is of a rough construction which affords the greatest contrast to the regularly dressed and closely jointed masonry of the great tower. The tower, on three sides, forms an outward projection from the curtain, of great size and strength, and is a structure of one period from the ground upwards. But, on entering the castle, it is at once obvious that the lower part of the south wall of the tower is formed by part of the earlier curtain. In the middle of this section of the work is a wide doorway, with a round-headed arch of two unmoulded orders, which now forms an entrance into the basement of the tower. The capitals of the jamb- shafts of this archway are of an unmistakably eleventh century character, with volutes at the upper angles, and a row of acanthus leaves round the bell. This type of capital is seen in such buildings as the two abbey churches at Caen, the nave of Christchurch priory, the west front of Lincoln minster, and other fabrics completed before 1100, and is a sure guide to the date of the work in which it occurs. It would appear, then, that the masonry of this archway and much of the curtain is the work of Alan of Brittany, earl of Richmond, who certainly founded the castle, and died in 1088.113 The castle contains more work of his date, of which something will be said in the sequel.
- 45. Ludlow; Entrance to inner ward When the great tower of Richmond was built, an entrance was made on the first floor, from the rampart-walk of the curtain. It is quite clear that, up to this time, the archway just described had been the main entrance of the castle, and had probably been covered on the side next the town by a rectangular building, which formed the lower stage of a gateway-tower or gatehouse, lower than the present donjon. This is borne out by a comparison with the keep at Ludlow, where it is quite clear that an eleventh century gatehouse
- 46. was converted at a later period into a keep, by walling up the outer entrance (94). A new entrance to the castle, as at Richmond, was made in the adjacent curtain, where it could be easily commanded by the tower. The date of the lowest stage of the donjon is revealed, as at Richmond, by the details of capitals and shafts, which in this case belong to an arcade in the east wall of the inner portion (95).114 Ludlow; Wall arcade in basement of great tower
- 47. Ludlow; Plan The site of Ludlow (96), like that of Richmond, is a rocky peninsula, where a stone curtain, for which material existed on the spot, formed the obvious means of defence. There was no mount and no keep. Exeter, again, is an early example of a stone-walled castle upon a rocky site, where a gateway with a tower above formed the principal entrance. Such sites were protected naturally by the fall of the ground on the steeper sides; the side on which approach was possible was covered by a ditch cut in the rock. The ditch would be crossed by a drawbridge, let down from the inner edge, next the gateway. The gatehouse itself would be a building of two or more stages; at Ludlow the upper stage, as completed, was considerably loftier than the lower.115 At Exeter there were probably
- 48. three stages. A single upper stage remains at Tickhill. At Lewes and Porchester there is clear evidence of an upper chamber. The gatehouse at Porchester, as at Ludlow, was the entrance to an inner ward, divided by a ditch from the large outer ward,116 which, at Porchester, represented the greater part of the enceinte of the Roman station, and contained the priory church and buildings. In these early gatehouses, the lower stage was closed at either end by a heavy wooden door, and was covered by a flat ceiling of timber. There was no arrangement for a portcullis. At Ludlow the lower stage appears to have been divided into an outer porch and inner hall by a cross wall, in which there must have been a door; but communication between these parts was also obtained by a narrow barrel-vaulted passage in the thickness of the east wall, which, opening from the outer division, turned at right angles to itself in the direction of the length of the wall, and, with another right-angled turn, opened into the inner hall (95). This passage was guarded by doors, which opened inwards at either end.117 When the outer doorway of the gatehouse was blocked, the lower stage was covered in with a pointed barrel-vault.118
- 49. Porchester; Plan As already indicated, the details of these gatehouses are very simple, and it is only where an attempt is made at ornament that their date can be fairly judged. Thus at Porchester, the entrance archway, masked by defensive work of a more advanced period, consists of an unmoulded ring of voussoirs, divided from the jambs by plain impost-blocks. The outer bailey or base-court of the castle, which is still surrounded by the Roman walls with their semicircular bastions, has two gatehouses. These occupy the sites of the west and east gates of the Roman enceinte, and the east or water-gate is in part Roman. The western gatehouse was rebuilt at a date contemporary with the enclosure of the castle proper within the north-west quarter of the Roman station, and was much altered at a later period. The archways of the Norman building remain, and show
- 50. no attempt at ornament, the inner one alone having impost-blocks below the arches. The work at Porchester is usually attributed to the early part of the twelfth century, and the ashlar facing of the side walls of the inner gateway appears to be of that date. A similar severity of detail is seen in the parallel case of Lewes, where the original gatehouse was also covered in the fourteenth century by a barbican (98). The great gatehouse of three stages, at Newark castle (99), was the work of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln from 1123 to 1148, whose uncle, Roger, bishop of Salisbury (1107-39), appears to have built the gatehouse at Sherborne. The archways of the lower stage at Newark are of great width, and are as simple in detail as those at Porchester. The outer or northern wall of the tower is faced with finely-jointed ashlar, and the archway on this side has a hood- moulding, with billet ornament.119
- 51. Lewes; Barbican The position of the gatehouse in relation to the curtain varies. At Richmond, Porchester, and Exeter the inner face of the gatehouse was flush with the curtain. At Ludlow, Newark, and Tickhill it was partly outside, but mostly inside the curtain. At Lewes the projection was wholly internal. Its measurements also vary. Porchester was 23 feet in length by 28 feet in breadth: Exeter and Lewes were about 30 feet, Tickhill about 36 feet square: Ludlow was 31 feet broad, but was some feet longer. The area of the gatehouse at Newark is larger than any, and the general proportions and elevation were those of a rectangular donjon rather than a mere gateway-tower.120 Newark; Gatehouse Stress has been laid on the occurrence of early stone fortifications on rocky and precipitous sites, where the ordinary earthworks were at once impracticable and unnecessary. It will be noted, however,
- 52. that the gatehouses which have been described are not found wholly in such positions. Tickhill and Lewes were mount-and-bailey castles with strong earthworks. Porchester is on level ground, open to Portsmouth harbour on two sides, and defended by a ditch on the sides towards the land: the site was already walled, but the rectangular keep appears to stand upon the base of an earlier mount, which may have been thrown up so as to enclose the Roman tower at the north-west angle of the station. Newark (157) stands on a moderate height above the meeting of the Devon and an arm of the Trent, with a deep ditch on the north and east sides towards the town. There was no castle here before Alexander began to build in or about 1130; and his work from the beginning consisted of a rectangular enclosure without a mount, in which the gatehouse had something of the importance of a keep. The necessity of defending the entrance of the castle, whatever the nature of the site might be, led to the construction of stone gatehouses at an early date; and, at Tickhill or Lewes, the gate-towers were probably constructed at a time when the mounts and embankments of the bailey were still defended by timber. Stone curtains which display “herring-bone” masonry may generally be assumed to be early in date. It has been customary to look upon “herring-bone” masonry as indicative of pre-Conquest work, and many buildings have been described as “Saxon” on the strength of this detail alone. On the other hand, it never occurs in direct association with details which may be regarded as definite criteria of pre-Conquest masonry; and the dimensions, apart from other features, of churches in which it is found in any quantity, usually afford suspicion of its post-Conquest origin.121 Its use in castles, which, as has been shown, were a Norman importation into England, demolishes its claim to be regarded as a distinctive sign of Saxon work; and its employment in Normandy, especially in the donjon of Falaise, where almost the whole of the inner face of the walls shows “herring-bone” coursing, may be set against any theory which would attribute it to English masons after the Conquest.122 It was used by Roman builders, and much of it may be seen in the
- 53. towers of the enceinte at Porchester. Saxon builders, however, did not copy Roman methods of walling, and the surest criterion of Saxon work is the thin wall, wholly composed of dressed stone, or of rag-work without facings. Norman builders, coming from a country where the continuity of Roman influence was never broken, used the ordinary Roman method of a compound wall, in which a solid rubble core was faced with ashlar on one or both sides. It is only natural that in early stone castles, which were constructed as quickly as possible, the facing should be of a rough description, of coursed rubble or of “herring-bone” courses laid in thick beds of mortar. At a subsequent date, when masonry was added to already fortified sites, the work could be pursued in a more leisurely manner. The most striking example of “herring-bone” work in an English castle is in the cross-wall of the great tower at Colchester (101), which is unquestionably a building of the eleventh century. Here the work was evidently hurried on, with the object of securing the greatest amount of strength in the least possible time, and Roman tiles were re-used in large quantities as bonding courses for the rubble walls, and for the “herring-bone” coursing of the dividing wall. At Richmond, as has been noted, there is a certain amount of “herring- bone” work in the curtain. The castle was founded on an entirely new site by Alan of Brittany: earthworks were out of the question, and the date of the older masonry of the stone wall is beyond dispute.
- 54. Colchester; Cross-wall A very remarkable example of “herring-bone” walling is the curtain-wall at Tamworth (48). The castle was founded by Robert Marmion after the Conquest on the low ground at the meeting of the Tame and Anker, the town, the fortified burh of Æthelflæd, being on higher ground to the north. Marmion’s fortress took the mount-and- bailey form. The bailey was a triangular platform of earth, raised artificially above the level of the river bank, with its apex towards the confluence of the streams. The mount was on its west side, and was divided from it by a ditch. The defences on the side next the town were of stone. Here the curtain-wall remains in very perfect condition, crossing the ditch and climbing the mount, with a sloping rampart-walk along the top. The inner face is composed entirely of “herring-bone” courses, alternating with one, two, and sometimes three, layers of thin horizontal stones. This appearance of more than one horizontal course is very unusual.123 It is obvious that the site, being commanded by the town, would be materially strengthened by a stone wall on that side: on the south side, scarping and ditching would have been sufficient, and there is no trace of stone-work of an early period here. The original entrance was at the north-eastern angle of the enclosure, and probably took the form of a stone gatehouse.124 Other instances of “herring-bone” work in curtain-
- 55. walls that may be mentioned here are at Corfe, Hastings, and Lincoln. Corfe was built on an isolated hill, which was scarped and ditched, something after the manner of a “contour” fort of early days: the portion of the curtain in which “herring-bone” coursing is found follows the natural line of the edge of the hill. Hastings is a fortress on a steep promontory: the mount, on the east side of the enclosure, was defended by a deep ditch, and covered by a large outer bailey with formidable earthworks. The curtain, on the east and north sides of the inner ward, is chiefly of the thirteenth century; but part of the north curtain, forming the north wall of the castle chapel, is of “herring-bone” construction. Lincoln, as we have seen, was a large mount-and-bailey fortress, surrounded by earthworks, which, on the west side, enclosed portions of the wall of the Roman city. “Herring-bone” masonry is seen here and there in the west and north curtains, which have been raised on the top of the earthen banks.125
- 56. Chepstow; Hall The battlemented parapet with which the curtain-wall of a castle is usually crowned, generally may be assigned, in its present state, to a later repair and heightening of the curtain. This is the case at Lincoln, where the parapet and upper part of the wall are of the thirteenth century. It has been seen that the edict of Lillebonne in 1080 forbade the defence of the curtain by flanking towers,126 rampart-walks, and other aids to defensive warfare; and, as a matter of fact, the full development of the fortification of the enceinte
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