Edward R. Ford - The Architectural Detail 建筑细部 前言
Preface
No construction, no architecture.
—Julien Gaudet
When I wrote the following pages, or rather when I began them, I lived in a third-floor flat overlooking the green at Cambridge University’s Downing College. It was a familiar landscape, much like the Lawn of the University of Virginia, my own school. The Lawn was begun nineteen years after the founding of Downing in 1800, and there are remarkable similarities between the two landscapes: both have central greens; both greens are flanked by ranges with pavilions, and both have a large central building closing one end. There are also significant differences. William Wilkins’ Downing is Greek Revival in form and built of Ketton stone, whereasThomas Jefferson’s Virginia is more Palladianinfluenced and built of brick and wood. Virginia’s central building was its library; its chapel, a post-Jeffersonian afterthought built in 1890, sits uncomfortably to one side. In perfect asymmetry with Virginia, Downing’s chapel lies on the central axis, while its library occupies the periphery. It is an afterthought as well, having been built in 1993. Like Downing, Virginia continues to expand its historic core, having just completed a library for special collections at the periphery of its lawn, and thus both institutions faced the question of how to build adjacent to the context of an architectural unity that is separated from the present not only by 180 years but also by a significant technological, and to many ideological, gap. Both institutions have answered this question in the same way: their overriding objective is to imitate their stylistic context, whether
Federal Style or Greek Revival architecture.
前言
“没有建造，也就没有建筑。”——Julien Gaudet (1834-1908，法国建筑师）
我在写或者说当我开始撰写以下章节的时候，我住在剑桥大学唐宁学院的一座三层公寓里，俯瞰整个校园的绿色。呈现在我眼前的景色与我的母校弗吉尼亚大学的草坪相仿。草坪是在唐宁学院1800年成立的19年后开始建造，这两种景观之间有着非凡的相似之处：都有中心绿地；绿地两侧都是有休息亭的山坡；都在一端有一座位于中心的大型建筑。它们之间也有着重要的区别。William Wilkins（1778-1839，英国建筑师、古典学者、考古学家）的唐宁学院校园在形式上是希腊复兴式，由凯顿岩石（ketton stone，一种当地开采的石灰岩）所建造，而Thomas Jefferson（1743－1826，美国政治家、思想家、哲学家、科学家、教育家，第三任美国总统）的弗吉尼亚校园更多受到帕拉迪奥的影响，由砖木建造。弗吉尼亚大学的中心建筑是它的图书馆；它的小礼拜堂，一座建于1890年后杰斐逊时代的添加物，怡然自得地坐落在校园的一侧。与之相反的是，唐宁的小礼拜堂位于学校的中轴线上，其图书馆则位于边缘地带。这座礼拜堂同样是后来添加的东西，建造于1993年。像唐宁一样，弗吉尼亚在扩大着它的历史核心，在其草坪的一侧刚刚完成了一座用于特殊珍藏的图书馆。因此两所学校共同面对着如何紧邻已有的建筑群进行建造的问题，隔绝新旧建筑的不仅仅是180年的历史，还有重要的技术上的以及众多意识形态上的鸿沟。两所学校都以同样的方式回应了这个问题：他们的最高准则是效仿已有的风格，不管是联邦风格还是希腊复兴式建筑。
Shortly after my return to Virginia, with a number of other faculty, I coauthored an open letter to the university’s administration and community at large, deploring the historicist prison in which the university had placed itself, arguing that Jefferson’s architectural legacy was not one of literal symbols, but rather of a set of larger principles. In the letter we asked, rhetorically, that this policy of glib, shallow revivalism be at the very least reexamined.
The process of writing the letter revealed some odd truths about its authors. We were united in our criticism of the status quo, but our individual reasoning was diverse and, at times, contradictory. Some were troubled by the lack of authenticity of the campus’s new buildings, by the pseudohistorical implications of revivalism. Some were troubled by the issue of diversity, by the Eurocentric and historical associations of universal classicism. Some sought
a more sensitive response to the landscape. Some were troubled by attitudes toward preservation, by the university’s policy of destruction of real histories and construction of fictitious ones. Many said it was not about style at all, arguing that better site planning, greater variety, and simply better buildings would solve the problem.
Given that the bulk of my teaching career has been spent in the subject of construction, it might be assumed that my own objection to the new buildings at the University of Virginia was that they have failed to bridge the gap between their late-eighteenth-century imagery and the modern technology that it conceals. The solid brick wall has become a veneer; the arches, once a structural necessity, are now supported by steel; the small pane of glass has
become large. Yet the imagery remains, full of false headers, quoins, muntins, steel-supported lintels, and precast classical columns. Few things are more visually painful than these buildings in their incomplete state: steel-framed structures with concrete block infill awaiting their 4-inch veneer of Colonial architecture. Virginia’s new library is built this way, and so are the great majority of its historicist counterparts.But this paradoxical construction is not the inevitable choice for this kind of revivalist architecture. There are few such tensions between real construction and preconceived imagery in the new Downing library. The walls
are solid—a layer of four-inch Ketton stone bonded to eight-inch brick, with insulation provided by an inner layer of three-inch insulating block.
Wall Detail, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Robert A.M. Stern,
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1996
墙身大样，达顿商学院，弗吉尼亚大学，罗伯特•A•M•斯特恩
夏洛茨维尔，弗吉尼亚，1996
Wall Detail, Maitland Robinson Library, Downing College, Quinlan Terry,
Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1993
墙身大样，麦特兰•罗宾逊图书馆，唐宁学院，昆兰•特利
剑桥，英国，1993
fig. 1
They are structural and, except for the roof, there is no concealed steel frame.Does this solve the problem posed by the new Virginia library? In a way, yes, but constructional solidity was, to me, not enough. The Downing library, however well made, has no ambitions beyond vague historical allusions. This is architecture by association, and an architecture based solely on historical association can only be a glib, disingenuous, and transient one, however ancient
its references or solid its construction. Good architecture has a deeper structure, in the largest sense of the word.
就在我回到弗吉尼亚不久，我和几位教职工一起写了一封公开信给弗吉尼亚大学的行政机构及其所在的社区，谴责这所大学将自己置身于历史的牢笼中，并称杰斐逊的建筑法规并非合理的象征，而只是一系列大范围的原则。在这封信中我们措辞讲究地请求最大程度地减少这类油腔滑调的政策和肤浅的复兴主义的运用。在书写公开信的过程中关于作者的一些奇怪的事实开始显现。我们因为批判的立场而集结起来，但我们各自的论证却非常多样，有时甚至相互矛盾。一些人因校园内新建筑缺乏真实性，一种暗示着伪历史的复兴主义而困扰；一些人却因这种以欧洲为中心的历史的普遍的古典主义所产生的多样性而烦恼；一些人寻求对于景观的更加敏感的回应；一些人担忧对于古建筑保护的态度，反对大学毁坏历史建筑，修建仿古建筑的政策；很多人认为这完全不是风格的问题，声称更好的场地设计，更多样、更好的建筑会解决这个问题。
考虑到我教师生涯的很大一部分时间投入在了建造这个课题上，大家可能认为我对于弗吉尼亚大学新建筑的意见主要在于它们没能将十八世纪晚期的建筑形象同它隐藏的现代技术相衔接。实体的砖墙成为了一层表皮；曾经是必需的结构的圆拱现在由钢筋所支撑；原来的小窗格现在变大。然而其形象得到了保存，其中充满了虚假的砖头，楔子，窗格，钢筋承重的门楣以及预制的古典柱式。几乎没有比这些建筑在未建成的状态更令人在视觉上感到不悦的了：钢筋混凝土结构等待着穿上4英尺后的殖民时代外衣。弗吉尼亚的新图书馆以及校园内大部分的历史主义建筑正是以这种形式建造的。
但这种矛盾的建造方式并不是这种复兴主义建筑的唯一选择。在新的唐宁图书馆中有一些同样的真实建造同预先构想的建筑形式之间的矛盾。墙壁是实心的——一层4英尺后的凯顿岩和8英尺厚的砖墙，中间由3英尺厚的隔热砖隔绝开。它们都是真实的结构形式，除了屋顶以外没有任何隐藏的钢筋。
这种构造是否解决了弗吉尼亚图书馆所带来的问题呢？从某种程度上来说，是的，但是建造的真实性对我来说仍然不够。唐宁图书馆尽管建造的不错，但是除了模糊的历史隐喻外没有理想。一个仅仅以与历史相联系为基础的建筑只能是油嘴滑舌的、虚伪的、暂时的，不管其参考物如何历史悠久或者其建造如何真实。好的建筑在最广义的话语上有着更深的根基。
Ultimately my problem with the new libraries at Downing and Virginia was not that either is a building in which the technology of one historical period is clad in the language of another, not that either building used literal symbols, not that they were oblivious to the technology of the modern world, not that they were classical per se, not that they recalled repressive societies from the past, not that they were Eurocentric , not that their forms originated in a belief in absolute standards of beauty to which few if any of their admirers subscribe, although all these things were problematic. The problem was their details. It was not that their details delivered a message with which I disagreed. It was not that they were ornaments; it was that in great buildings, the details, in the sense of a demonstration of constructional resolution, are the means of delivering whatever message architecture communicates.
This has no better illustration than the Lawn itself. There was a consensus among the authors of the letter that the meaning of the Lawn lay not in its superficial appearance, but in a body of principles of which it is the manifestation, that is, that there is a deeper structure below the surface that gives the Lawn its significance. Understandably, many readers of the letter objected to the implications of this, arguing that if all articulation capitals, bases, moldings and trim of the various parts that make up the Lawn’s architecture disappeared, the result would be a very un-Jeffersonian, unified monolith. To strip the Lawn of its ornaments, they argued, would deprive it of all character and significantly alter its meaning. Proportion, composition, and geometry were insufficient, the argument went, and if the ornaments were removed, one would need to replace them with something else, not necessarily historical, not necessarily even recognizable as a symbol, but something that would perform the tasks of the older ornaments that transcends their historical associations. I agree; some type of detail was necessary. But to find a true detail meant that one had to get beyond the familiar and find what Louis Kahn calls its point of beginning. I am not so naive as to argue that classical ornaments have constructional origins, although many believe this, and some ornaments probably do. But as details, and not as ornament, they perform a variety of tasks beyond historical recollection, and this recollection is an impediment, not an aid, to understand-ing the larger order of the architecture and its meaning.
最终我认为唐宁学院和弗吉尼亚大学新图书馆的问题不是这两座建筑都以另一种建筑语言披上了一个历史时期的技术的外衣，也不是两者都使用了表面的象征，也不是他们对于现代世界的技术毫不在意，也不是他们是古典的，也不是他们唤起了过去压抑的旧社会的会议，也不是他们的欧陆风格，也不是他们的形式源自对绝对美学标准的信仰——尽管他们的赞成者多数并不认同，尽管所有这些方面都存在着问题。最主要的问题在于他们的细部。并不是说他们的细部传达了我不赞同的信息，也不是说这些细部仅起到装饰的作用，而是在伟大的建筑中，细节是建造问题的表述，是传达建筑信息的一种方式。
草地本身更能说明这个问题。在写信的作者之间存在着这样的共识：草坪的意义不仅在于它的外表，但是建立在一系列法则之上宣告着在表面之下有着更深层的结构宣告着它的重要性。可以理解的是，许多读者反对了这一暗示，他们反驳道：如果所有的资金，基础，铸造以及修剪各个组成草坪建筑群的环节都消失，最终将会形成一个非常非杰斐逊式的，统一的整体。为了去除草坪的装饰物，他们声称，将脱去它所有的特色并改变它的意义。比例、成分以及几何还不够，争论继续，如果装饰物被去除，将需要用其他的东西来替代它们，不一定是历史的，甚至不必要是标志物，但是是一些能够胜任过去装饰的角色——即超越与历史的联系。我同意某种细部是必要的。但是要找到一种完全真实的细部需要我们超越熟悉的常识，找寻到那种路易斯•康所称的原点。我并没有幼稚到要反驳古典装饰有着建造性质的起源，尽管许多人这么认为，并且部分装饰确实是这样。但是作为细部而非装饰，他们除了对古典要素的追忆外还扮演着多种角色。这种追忆对于理解建筑秩序和意义来说是一种阻碍，而非帮助。
Details are the basis for, not an accessory to, understanding a building. This is not to say that the detail contains within it the idea of the totality of the building; this book is, in fact, an argument to the contrary, only that an understanding of the building cannot be separated from an understanding of the detail, and that the role of the detail is not simply to create pleasant allusions or comfortable associations. Significant details are about a good deal more than construction, but they begin with construction. Architecture, as I have come to know it, is the art of building, and if it communicates any message of significance, it does so through construction. Construction not just in the sense of building, not just as a practical necessity, but in the way that we see it, the way we understand it as a manifestation of science, as an object to which we intuitively respond, as a part in a history that we know. I believe that architecture communicates many things, but it does not do so, or does not do so well, by mere association.
Insofar as it communicates an idea about place, it does so through an understanding of scale. Insofar as architecture communicates spirituality, it does so through weight. Insofar as it communicates an idea about society, it does so through joints. Insofar as it suggests something beyond, something different from, even something contradictory to its own reality, it does so using its own construction as a point of departure.
细部是理解一栋建筑的基础，而非建筑的附属物。这并不是说在细部中包含着整个建筑的全部概念；实际上这本书要论证的内容刚好相反，只有这样对建筑的理解才不能从对细部的理解中分离开，同时细部所起到的也不仅仅是暗示和关联的作用。重要的细部远远不只与建造相关，但他们从建造开始。建筑，正如我渐渐开始理解的，是建造的艺术，同时它所传达出的重要意义也会通过建造表达出来。建造不仅是所谓的建房子，也不仅是实践的必然需要，还包含了我们看待它的方式。我们将建造不仅看作是一种科技表达，而且看作是一种我们会做出直觉反应的东西，还看作是一种我们所知道的历史的一部分。我相信建筑传递着许多内容，但是它并不仅仅是通过思想的联系来传达，或者说通过思想的联系来传达的并不够好。
在它传递着关于场所的概念的情况下，它通过对尺度的理解来做到这一点。在建筑传递精神性的情况下，它通过轻重的区分来做到。在它传达关于社会的概念的情况下，它通过节点来做到。在它暗示另一些东西，一些不同的东西，甚至暗示一些与自身现实矛盾的东西的情况下，它通过采用自身建造作为出发点的方式来做到。
左侧（由上至下）：
Oxford Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom, Deane and Woodward, 1860
牛津博物馆，英国，牛津，迪恩和伍德沃，1860
Merchants National Bank, Winona, Minnesota, Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, 1913
招商局国家银行，明尼苏达，珀赛尔、菲克和埃姆斯利，1913
Musée des Travaux Publics, Paris, France, Auguste Perret, 1939
博物馆公共工程部，法国巴黎，奥古斯特•佩雷，1939
Eggers Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, 1993
埃格斯会堂，雪城大学，纽约锡腊库扎，1993
右侧（由上至下）：
Dining hall, Downing College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, William Wilkins, 1821
餐厅，唐宁学院，剑桥，英国，威廉•威尔金斯，1821
Pavilion II, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, 1822
阁楼2，弗吉尼亚大学，夏洛茨维尔，弗吉尼亚，托马斯•杰斐逊，1822
No construction, no architecture.
—Julien Gaudet
When I wrote the following pages, or rather when I began them, I lived in a third-floor flat overlooking the green at Cambridge University’s Downing College. It was a familiar landscape, much like the Lawn of the University of Virginia, my own school. The Lawn was begun nineteen years after the founding of Downing in 1800, and there are remarkable similarities between the two landscapes: both have central greens; both greens are flanked by ranges with pavilions, and both have a large central building closing one end. There are also significant differences. William Wilkins’ Downing is Greek Revival in form and built of Ketton stone, whereasThomas Jefferson’s Virginia is more Palladianinfluenced and built of brick and wood. Virginia’s central building was its library; its chapel, a post-Jeffersonian afterthought built in 1890, sits uncomfortably to one side. In perfect asymmetry with Virginia, Downing’s chapel lies on the central axis, while its library occupies the periphery. It is an afterthought as well, having been built in 1993. Like Downing, Virginia continues to expand its historic core, having just completed a library for special collections at the periphery of its lawn, and thus both institutions faced the question of how to build adjacent to the context of an architectural unity that is separated from the present not only by 180 years but also by a significant technological, and to many ideological, gap. Both institutions have answered this question in the same way: their overriding objective is to imitate their stylistic context, whether
Federal Style or Greek Revival architecture.
前言
“没有建造，也就没有建筑。”——Julien Gaudet (1834-1908，法国建筑师）
我在写或者说当我开始撰写以下章节的时候，我住在剑桥大学唐宁学院的一座三层公寓里，俯瞰整个校园的绿色。呈现在我眼前的景色与我的母校弗吉尼亚大学的草坪相仿。草坪是在唐宁学院1800年成立的19年后开始建造，这两种景观之间有着非凡的相似之处：都有中心绿地；绿地两侧都是有休息亭的山坡；都在一端有一座位于中心的大型建筑。它们之间也有着重要的区别。William Wilkins（1778-1839，英国建筑师、古典学者、考古学家）的唐宁学院校园在形式上是希腊复兴式，由凯顿岩石（ketton stone，一种当地开采的石灰岩）所建造，而Thomas Jefferson（1743－1826，美国政治家、思想家、哲学家、科学家、教育家，第三任美国总统）的弗吉尼亚校园更多受到帕拉迪奥的影响，由砖木建造。弗吉尼亚大学的中心建筑是它的图书馆；它的小礼拜堂，一座建于1890年后杰斐逊时代的添加物，怡然自得地坐落在校园的一侧。与之相反的是，唐宁的小礼拜堂位于学校的中轴线上，其图书馆则位于边缘地带。这座礼拜堂同样是后来添加的东西，建造于1993年。像唐宁一样，弗吉尼亚在扩大着它的历史核心，在其草坪的一侧刚刚完成了一座用于特殊珍藏的图书馆。因此两所学校共同面对着如何紧邻已有的建筑群进行建造的问题，隔绝新旧建筑的不仅仅是180年的历史，还有重要的技术上的以及众多意识形态上的鸿沟。两所学校都以同样的方式回应了这个问题：他们的最高准则是效仿已有的风格，不管是联邦风格还是希腊复兴式建筑。
Shortly after my return to Virginia, with a number of other faculty, I coauthored an open letter to the university’s administration and community at large, deploring the historicist prison in which the university had placed itself, arguing that Jefferson’s architectural legacy was not one of literal symbols, but rather of a set of larger principles. In the letter we asked, rhetorically, that this policy of glib, shallow revivalism be at the very least reexamined.
The process of writing the letter revealed some odd truths about its authors. We were united in our criticism of the status quo, but our individual reasoning was diverse and, at times, contradictory. Some were troubled by the lack of authenticity of the campus’s new buildings, by the pseudohistorical implications of revivalism. Some were troubled by the issue of diversity, by the Eurocentric and historical associations of universal classicism. Some sought
a more sensitive response to the landscape. Some were troubled by attitudes toward preservation, by the university’s policy of destruction of real histories and construction of fictitious ones. Many said it was not about style at all, arguing that better site planning, greater variety, and simply better buildings would solve the problem.
Given that the bulk of my teaching career has been spent in the subject of construction, it might be assumed that my own objection to the new buildings at the University of Virginia was that they have failed to bridge the gap between their late-eighteenth-century imagery and the modern technology that it conceals. The solid brick wall has become a veneer; the arches, once a structural necessity, are now supported by steel; the small pane of glass has
become large. Yet the imagery remains, full of false headers, quoins, muntins, steel-supported lintels, and precast classical columns. Few things are more visually painful than these buildings in their incomplete state: steel-framed structures with concrete block infill awaiting their 4-inch veneer of Colonial architecture. Virginia’s new library is built this way, and so are the great majority of its historicist counterparts.But this paradoxical construction is not the inevitable choice for this kind of revivalist architecture. There are few such tensions between real construction and preconceived imagery in the new Downing library. The walls
are solid—a layer of four-inch Ketton stone bonded to eight-inch brick, with insulation provided by an inner layer of three-inch insulating block.
 |
Wall Detail, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Robert A.M. Stern,
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1996
墙身大样，达顿商学院，弗吉尼亚大学，罗伯特•A•M•斯特恩
夏洛茨维尔，弗吉尼亚，1996
 |
Wall Detail, Maitland Robinson Library, Downing College, Quinlan Terry,
Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1993
墙身大样，麦特兰•罗宾逊图书馆，唐宁学院，昆兰•特利
剑桥，英国，1993
fig. 1
They are structural and, except for the roof, there is no concealed steel frame.Does this solve the problem posed by the new Virginia library? In a way, yes, but constructional solidity was, to me, not enough. The Downing library, however well made, has no ambitions beyond vague historical allusions. This is architecture by association, and an architecture based solely on historical association can only be a glib, disingenuous, and transient one, however ancient
its references or solid its construction. Good architecture has a deeper structure, in the largest sense of the word.
就在我回到弗吉尼亚不久，我和几位教职工一起写了一封公开信给弗吉尼亚大学的行政机构及其所在的社区，谴责这所大学将自己置身于历史的牢笼中，并称杰斐逊的建筑法规并非合理的象征，而只是一系列大范围的原则。在这封信中我们措辞讲究地请求最大程度地减少这类油腔滑调的政策和肤浅的复兴主义的运用。在书写公开信的过程中关于作者的一些奇怪的事实开始显现。我们因为批判的立场而集结起来，但我们各自的论证却非常多样，有时甚至相互矛盾。一些人因校园内新建筑缺乏真实性，一种暗示着伪历史的复兴主义而困扰；一些人却因这种以欧洲为中心的历史的普遍的古典主义所产生的多样性而烦恼；一些人寻求对于景观的更加敏感的回应；一些人担忧对于古建筑保护的态度，反对大学毁坏历史建筑，修建仿古建筑的政策；很多人认为这完全不是风格的问题，声称更好的场地设计，更多样、更好的建筑会解决这个问题。
考虑到我教师生涯的很大一部分时间投入在了建造这个课题上，大家可能认为我对于弗吉尼亚大学新建筑的意见主要在于它们没能将十八世纪晚期的建筑形象同它隐藏的现代技术相衔接。实体的砖墙成为了一层表皮；曾经是必需的结构的圆拱现在由钢筋所支撑；原来的小窗格现在变大。然而其形象得到了保存，其中充满了虚假的砖头，楔子，窗格，钢筋承重的门楣以及预制的古典柱式。几乎没有比这些建筑在未建成的状态更令人在视觉上感到不悦的了：钢筋混凝土结构等待着穿上4英尺后的殖民时代外衣。弗吉尼亚的新图书馆以及校园内大部分的历史主义建筑正是以这种形式建造的。
但这种矛盾的建造方式并不是这种复兴主义建筑的唯一选择。在新的唐宁图书馆中有一些同样的真实建造同预先构想的建筑形式之间的矛盾。墙壁是实心的——一层4英尺后的凯顿岩和8英尺厚的砖墙，中间由3英尺厚的隔热砖隔绝开。它们都是真实的结构形式，除了屋顶以外没有任何隐藏的钢筋。
这种构造是否解决了弗吉尼亚图书馆所带来的问题呢？从某种程度上来说，是的，但是建造的真实性对我来说仍然不够。唐宁图书馆尽管建造的不错，但是除了模糊的历史隐喻外没有理想。一个仅仅以与历史相联系为基础的建筑只能是油嘴滑舌的、虚伪的、暂时的，不管其参考物如何历史悠久或者其建造如何真实。好的建筑在最广义的话语上有着更深的根基。
Ultimately my problem with the new libraries at Downing and Virginia was not that either is a building in which the technology of one historical period is clad in the language of another, not that either building used literal symbols, not that they were oblivious to the technology of the modern world, not that they were classical per se, not that they recalled repressive societies from the past, not that they were Eurocentric , not that their forms originated in a belief in absolute standards of beauty to which few if any of their admirers subscribe, although all these things were problematic. The problem was their details. It was not that their details delivered a message with which I disagreed. It was not that they were ornaments; it was that in great buildings, the details, in the sense of a demonstration of constructional resolution, are the means of delivering whatever message architecture communicates.
This has no better illustration than the Lawn itself. There was a consensus among the authors of the letter that the meaning of the Lawn lay not in its superficial appearance, but in a body of principles of which it is the manifestation, that is, that there is a deeper structure below the surface that gives the Lawn its significance. Understandably, many readers of the letter objected to the implications of this, arguing that if all articulation capitals, bases, moldings and trim of the various parts that make up the Lawn’s architecture disappeared, the result would be a very un-Jeffersonian, unified monolith. To strip the Lawn of its ornaments, they argued, would deprive it of all character and significantly alter its meaning. Proportion, composition, and geometry were insufficient, the argument went, and if the ornaments were removed, one would need to replace them with something else, not necessarily historical, not necessarily even recognizable as a symbol, but something that would perform the tasks of the older ornaments that transcends their historical associations. I agree; some type of detail was necessary. But to find a true detail meant that one had to get beyond the familiar and find what Louis Kahn calls its point of beginning. I am not so naive as to argue that classical ornaments have constructional origins, although many believe this, and some ornaments probably do. But as details, and not as ornament, they perform a variety of tasks beyond historical recollection, and this recollection is an impediment, not an aid, to understand-ing the larger order of the architecture and its meaning.
最终我认为唐宁学院和弗吉尼亚大学新图书馆的问题不是这两座建筑都以另一种建筑语言披上了一个历史时期的技术的外衣，也不是两者都使用了表面的象征，也不是他们对于现代世界的技术毫不在意，也不是他们是古典的，也不是他们唤起了过去压抑的旧社会的会议，也不是他们的欧陆风格，也不是他们的形式源自对绝对美学标准的信仰——尽管他们的赞成者多数并不认同，尽管所有这些方面都存在着问题。最主要的问题在于他们的细部。并不是说他们的细部传达了我不赞同的信息，也不是说这些细部仅起到装饰的作用，而是在伟大的建筑中，细节是建造问题的表述，是传达建筑信息的一种方式。
草地本身更能说明这个问题。在写信的作者之间存在着这样的共识：草坪的意义不仅在于它的外表，但是建立在一系列法则之上宣告着在表面之下有着更深层的结构宣告着它的重要性。可以理解的是，许多读者反对了这一暗示，他们反驳道：如果所有的资金，基础，铸造以及修剪各个组成草坪建筑群的环节都消失，最终将会形成一个非常非杰斐逊式的，统一的整体。为了去除草坪的装饰物，他们声称，将脱去它所有的特色并改变它的意义。比例、成分以及几何还不够，争论继续，如果装饰物被去除，将需要用其他的东西来替代它们，不一定是历史的，甚至不必要是标志物，但是是一些能够胜任过去装饰的角色——即超越与历史的联系。我同意某种细部是必要的。但是要找到一种完全真实的细部需要我们超越熟悉的常识，找寻到那种路易斯•康所称的原点。我并没有幼稚到要反驳古典装饰有着建造性质的起源，尽管许多人这么认为，并且部分装饰确实是这样。但是作为细部而非装饰，他们除了对古典要素的追忆外还扮演着多种角色。这种追忆对于理解建筑秩序和意义来说是一种阻碍，而非帮助。
Details are the basis for, not an accessory to, understanding a building. This is not to say that the detail contains within it the idea of the totality of the building; this book is, in fact, an argument to the contrary, only that an understanding of the building cannot be separated from an understanding of the detail, and that the role of the detail is not simply to create pleasant allusions or comfortable associations. Significant details are about a good deal more than construction, but they begin with construction. Architecture, as I have come to know it, is the art of building, and if it communicates any message of significance, it does so through construction. Construction not just in the sense of building, not just as a practical necessity, but in the way that we see it, the way we understand it as a manifestation of science, as an object to which we intuitively respond, as a part in a history that we know. I believe that architecture communicates many things, but it does not do so, or does not do so well, by mere association.
Insofar as it communicates an idea about place, it does so through an understanding of scale. Insofar as architecture communicates spirituality, it does so through weight. Insofar as it communicates an idea about society, it does so through joints. Insofar as it suggests something beyond, something different from, even something contradictory to its own reality, it does so using its own construction as a point of departure.
细部是理解一栋建筑的基础，而非建筑的附属物。这并不是说在细部中包含着整个建筑的全部概念；实际上这本书要论证的内容刚好相反，只有这样对建筑的理解才不能从对细部的理解中分离开，同时细部所起到的也不仅仅是暗示和关联的作用。重要的细部远远不只与建造相关，但他们从建造开始。建筑，正如我渐渐开始理解的，是建造的艺术，同时它所传达出的重要意义也会通过建造表达出来。建造不仅是所谓的建房子，也不仅是实践的必然需要，还包含了我们看待它的方式。我们将建造不仅看作是一种科技表达，而且看作是一种我们会做出直觉反应的东西，还看作是一种我们所知道的历史的一部分。我相信建筑传递着许多内容，但是它并不仅仅是通过思想的联系来传达，或者说通过思想的联系来传达的并不够好。
在它传递着关于场所的概念的情况下，它通过对尺度的理解来做到这一点。在建筑传递精神性的情况下，它通过轻重的区分来做到。在它传达关于社会的概念的情况下，它通过节点来做到。在它暗示另一些东西，一些不同的东西，甚至暗示一些与自身现实矛盾的东西的情况下，它通过采用自身建造作为出发点的方式来做到。
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左侧（由上至下）：
Oxford Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom, Deane and Woodward, 1860
牛津博物馆，英国，牛津，迪恩和伍德沃，1860
Merchants National Bank, Winona, Minnesota, Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, 1913
招商局国家银行，明尼苏达，珀赛尔、菲克和埃姆斯利，1913
Musée des Travaux Publics, Paris, France, Auguste Perret, 1939
博物馆公共工程部，法国巴黎，奥古斯特•佩雷，1939
Eggers Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, 1993
埃格斯会堂，雪城大学，纽约锡腊库扎，1993
右侧（由上至下）：
Dining hall, Downing College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, William Wilkins, 1821
餐厅，唐宁学院，剑桥，英国，威廉•威尔金斯，1821
Pavilion II, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, 1822
阁楼2，弗吉尼亚大学，夏洛茨维尔，弗吉尼亚，托马斯•杰斐逊，1822
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四三二 转发了这篇日记 2022-06-18 12:50:09
