No matter how clear the exposition of the principles may be [in a lecture], no matter how fresh and striking the illustrations, it still remains that the student is relieved by the instructor from carrying on the mental processes which he ought to conduct for himself.
Tag: design
‘Handbuch der Architektur’ (1880–1943): A German Design Manual for the Building Profession
The first volume of the massive reference book series Handbuch der Architektur (Handbook of Architecture) was published in 1880.1 At this time, the population of European cities was growing at a hitherto unprecedented scale, industrialization outside of England was reaching its peak, and traffic infrastructure was taking on global dimensions. The building boom of the newly founded German Reich was in full swing too. Suddenly, workshops, post offices, hospitals, and more had to deal with ever increasing numbers of customers or patients and goods that demanded bigger, spatially and functionally more differentiated facilities. Novel types of buildings, such as railway stations, department stores, and disinfection plants, presented architects with the pressing question of how to design them appropriately to their purposes and so that building and using them would be cost efficient.
The Book Will Kill the Edifice? Mechanics Manuals and Learning to Draw in the Early and Mid-Nineteenth Century
In Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) wrote, “the book will kill the edifice.” Spoken by Archdeacon Claude Frollo, this phrase signified the view that the Renaissance was “that setting sun we mistake for a dawn.”1 Understood as a revolution in tectonics away from the organic and toward the classical, the Renaissance had separated sculpture, painting, and architecture—carved and parceled them out from what was formerly a single edifice of Gothic construction. The mechanism? Printing. Whereas Gothic architecture had reflected and affirmed the entire intellectual investment of society, the various arts and sciences were now contained in books.