New Left Review I/5, September-October 1960

Philip Aldis

Experiencing Architecture

by S. E. Rasmussen,

Chapan & Hall

this is a very good, and possibly dangerous, book about architecture. It is good, above all, for three reasons. In the first place, it is not written in professional jargon—neither the academic jargon of “architraves” and “curtain walls”, where structural technicalities become an excuse for lack of discrimination; nor the matey jargon of the architectural magazines, where every building is a “neo”-movement, and everybody “Bill” or “Ted” or “Corb”. It avoids the parochial professionalism of most architects, to whom the “layman” is either client (i.e. nuisance or bore) or a vague abstraction (i.e. “peopling the perspectives”). Secondly, it never deals in the sort of historicism where either “everything leads up to the modern movement” or “each period has its own style appropriate to the age”. Thirdly, it is not angry about “modernism”, nor “subtopia”, nor telegraph poles, and consequently does not label everything “good” or “bad” on grounds of external appearance alone. This is, in fact, a book about buildings as we see, use, enjoy and even find them annoying all the time. Professor Rasmussen’s criticism of architecture is essentially “functional” in the true unlimited sense of the word. He considers every building as an organism created by many things: the site and the use to which it is to be put; the ideals and the taste (two different things) of the age or of the client; the creative genius or otherwise of the architect; the craftsmanship of the builder; and the accident of the events that can occur while it is being conceived or erected. He is absorbed in the effect of buildings on everyday life; perhaps his main aim is to bring to our notice—in a far subtler way than the cries against “subtopia”—the created environment in which we spend nearly all our lives. He does not describe any buildings he has not himself visited. Because of this first-hand experience he can say—as the apologists for the modern movement and the shout-ugly boys cannot—that this doorway in a mediocre house is superb, this detailing is poor in a well conceived whole; he can say that so-and-so is “trying” to do something, not necessarily either wholly succeeding or wholly failing. He is genuinely critical because he is genuinely alive and interested in why and how—in the widest sense—any building is as it is.

’My institution subscribes to NLR, why can't I access this article?’