Ruskin,design

Theory Of Design Presentation
by
Annam Irfan
Daksh Tandon
Gunraj Singh Khandpur
Iman Bhattacharya
abridged

RENAISSANCE (LATE 19TH CENTURY) TO MODERNISM
After Boulle’s Regularity Symmetry and Variety and
JNL Durand’s focus on ‘disposition’ of the architect, simplicity, Orders and Décor
not important

John Ruskin
(1819 –1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian Era, also an art
patron,draughtsman , watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist.
He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature
to education, and botany to political economy
Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as
having anticipated interest in environmentalism,
sustainability and craft.
Ruskin’s developing interest in architecture,
and particularly in the Gothic revival, led to
the first work to bear his name, The Seven
Lamps of Architecture (1849, It contained 14
plates etched by the author. The title refers to
seven moral categories that Ruskin considered
vital to and inseparable from all architecture:
sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory
and obedience.
Seven Lamps promoted the virtues of a
secular and Protestant form of Gothic.

Building Architecture
1)Stability
2)Composition
3)Spatial accommodation
• The art such that given a building’s workings
and use ,it influences on its form certain
‘characteristics’- beautiful and venerable
but otherwise unnecessary.
• Beyond limitations of basic functions
Traceries and moldings Rouen and Salisbury
(The Stone of Venice )
Lamp of Sacrifice
Naval ‘architecture’

“Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns
the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that
the sight of them contribute to his mental health.”

UTILITY
ARCHED,PROJECTIONS
CARVED
Machicolations
Herstmonoeux Castle, Sussex

Lamp of Truth
• “There are some faults in the sight of
love, some errors in the estimate of
wisdom, but truth forgives no insult,
endures no stain.”
• Calls truth a pillar of the earth yet a cloudy pillar
• “That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is
indeed only at deceit malicious”
• The greatness of a fault depends partly on the nature of the
person against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent of its
consequences. Its pardonableness depends, humanly speaking, on
the degree of temptation to it.
• “…But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie…that cast that black
mystery over humanity

• “… Do not let us
lie at all. Do not
think of one
falsity as
harmless, and
another as slight,
and another as
unintended. “

Imagination and painting are not a deception as they don’t assert to
be the reality. A mere conjecture or depiction .
“It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that we should be able to
invent and to behold what is not; and to our rank as moral creatures, that we
should know and confess at the same time that it is not.”
Pleasure lies in imagination knowing that it is not reality .The moment one
starts to perceive it as reality it becomes madness.And hence injurious

…”The violations of truth, which dishonour poetry and painting, are thus for
the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects.
But in architecture another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation of
truth is possible; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of
material, or the quantity of labour…”
• General moving away from matters of conscience
.
• Unworthy of architects, arts nations
We may not be able to command good, or beautiful, or
inventive, architecture; but we can command an honest
architecture: the meagreness of poverty may be pardoned,
the sternness of utility respected; but what is there but scorn
for the meanness of deception?

Architectural deceits
1)false supports
2)false rendering of material
3)cast/machine made ornaments

1)Structural deceit
o Suggestion of a support other
than the one true
o “A noble building would be when
an intelligent eye discovers the
great secrets of its structure”

Salisbury Cathedral,Rib vaults
Analogy of a tree,
• load down to up but fibres in a tree up to
down –contrary
• Shafts of ribs have fibrous nature
• Legitimate appeal to the imagination
Imagine! It’s a tree

However its no deceit in hiding the extra supports
added to carry the weight that’s invisible/imperceptible
to the spectators eye.
For example the actual weight of the Gothic Vault is not perceived by the
spectator.The amount of weight he can perceive is being carried by the visible
shafts and ribs.
However the extra weight that’s not perceived is being carried by the concealed
buttresses
But he contradicts himself in saying that
” …Nothing can be worse, either as judged by the taste or the
conscience, than affectedly inadequate supports suspensions
in air, and other such tricks and vanities”

‘Gothic tricks’
Buttress used in late gothic extensively as décor
o where not needed
o in forms where it could be of no use.
Choir of Beauvais (elfinspell.com)
St Quen at Rouen (wikipedia)

Stone v/s Metal (IRON)
Rouen Cathedral's -Iron SpireCross cutting-alternate marble and stone
Cathedral of Prato -lintel (flickerriver.com)
Architecture defined as complete knowledge of all the materials
used.While iron in that era was a new building material not tried and
tested before hence the apprehension
• Fear of new untested material
• IRON-Calamity upon calamity

“…I would remind the architect who thinks that I am
unnecessarily and narrowly limiting his resources or his art…”
He still sticks to his stand ,saying that even God asserts the principle that
that order and system are nobler things than power.

2)Surface Deceits
Like painting wood to represent marble
Ornaments in deceptive relief
Roof of Milan Cathedral Extensive traceries in Fan
Vaults

The Roof of Sistine Chapel
In what lies the distinctive character?
In two points, principally —
First. That the architecture is so closely
associated with the figures, and has so
grand fellow ship with them in its forms
and cast shadows, that both are at once felt
to be of a piece; and as the figures must
necessarily be painted, the architecture is
known to be so too. There is thus no
deception
The second, that so great a painter as
Michael Angelo would always stop short in
such minor parts of his design, of the
degree of vulgar force which would be
necessary to induce the supposition of
their reality; and, strangely as it may sound,
would never paint badly enough to deceive
(Victorianweb.org)

Camera Di Correggio parma,frescoes (wikipedia)
Justifies frescoes,Beauty of Verona and Venice
If your painting or creating a fresco,its perfectly legitimate and desirable as it involves no
deceit.
But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like
stone, is to tell a falsehood;

Frescoes legit
“To cover brick with plaster and then
frescoes is a desirable mode of
decoration” –doesn’t deceive
Imitation painting –
White Marble
‘dishonest’
CampoSanto,Pisa
“…Fitting as add luxury in places meant
for idleness-villa s palaces,gardens.sacred
spaces”

Bronzed Wood-
“…But the smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments,
the barred windows with jaundiced borders and dead ground square panes,
the gilded or bronzed wood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of
curtains and cushions, and pew heads, and altar railings, and Birmingham
metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and yellow sickness of the false
marble disguises all, observe; falsehoods all who are they who like
these things? …”

Doesn’t blame whitewash and gilding for being deceit ful as
” it shows itself for what it is and asserts nothing of what is beneath it”
Gilding has become innocent by its frequent use.
• only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence, or
sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting
Justifies veneering of marble on a rough brick wall in churches not
deceit as its understood that a marble facing doesn’t imply a marble
wall
“…when very precious stones are used, as jaspers form of Mosaic, and
serpentines, it must become, not only an extravagant and vain increase
of expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility…”

Gilding with gold
”…we should sometimes rather spare external ornament than diminish the unseen
value and consistency of what we do; and I believe that a better manner of design,
and a more careful and studious, if less abundant, decoration would follow, upon the
consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. “
Marble Columns

The true colors of architecture are those of
natural stone.
Every variety of hue, from pale yellow to
purple, passing through orange, red, and
brown, is entirely at our command; nearly
every kind of green is attainable; and with
these, and pure white, what harmonies might
we not achieve?
Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity
is unlimited, where brighter colours are
required, let glass, and gold protected by glass,
be used in mosaic a kind of work as durable as
the solid stone, and incapable of losing its
lustre by time and let the painter's work be
reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner
chamber. This is the true and faithful way of
building;
Where this cannot be, the device of external
colouring may, indeed, be employed without
dishonour; but it must be with the warning
reflection, that a time will come when such
aids must pass away,
Temple Of Hera,once
painted
St Marks, mosaics
San Miniato,Alabasters

Architectural nobility -what doesn’t fade
Painting over a surface should be done only after the
surface has been treated in a way that even when the
paint fails ,the nobility of the structure remains

3)Discredits Cast/Machine made Ornaments
“…Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody wants integrity. Leave your
walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked mud and chopped straw, if
need be; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood.”
“….You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not; which pretends to
have cost, and to be, what it did not, and is not; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an
impertinence, and a sin. ”
(Designbythebay.com)

French Victorian tiled floor Trompe L'oeil; crumbling
stone ornament with
molding.
“….For it is not the material, but the absence of the human labour, which
makes the thing worthless
a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by the
human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery”
Terracota handwork

Lamp of Life
“ …For we are not sent into this world to do any thing into which we
cannot put our hearts.”
”…There is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sensuality
enough in human existence, without our turning the few glowing
moments of it into mechanism.”

Ruskin,design

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