Lanterna Rally

Author: John Beverley Robinson

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-27

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 9781330242810

Excerpt from Principles of Architectural Composition: An Attempt to Order and Phrase Ideas Which Have Hitherto Been Only Felt by the Instinctive Taste of Designers John Beverly Robinson It is, of course, a question whether architecture, in our time, will improve in its artistic character, or will deteriorate until that character is wholly lost. There is a tendency in each direction. The evil influences which cause the tendency downwards are numerous, and have been discussed on many occasions - the commercial demands which control nearly all costly buildings, the ignorance of the public men whose opinions control what is erected for the State, the changed position of the architect from that of a salaried artistic supervisor to that of a highly paid fiduciary administrator, and the disappearance from the modern world of the ancient instinct towards ornamental design. The good influence which causes a tendency upward is merely the slowly developed sense of our own short-comings caused by that very self-conscious, comparative study of ourselves and of the past which has injured architectural design in the past but as we believe in the past only; to help it greatly in the future. "Nothing is certain but the unforeseen," and in like manner, nothing happens but the unexpected. Whatever we prophesy is surely destined not to come to pass; so much wisdom seems to have come to us from the last two hundred years of political, social and literary prophesying. Tendencies are all that we can judge of; and even these are difficult to trace, lost as they are to sight and to touch amid the vast complexities of modern Societies, stretching over continents and reproducing themselves beyond seas. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.