The Arcades Project - Operi

"Railroad tracks;' with the peculiar and unmistakable dream world that attaches
to them, are a very impressive example of just how great the natural symbolic
power of technological illliovation can be. In this regard, it is illuminating to learn
of the bitter polemic waged against iron rails in the 1830s. In A Treatise in
Elementary Locomotion, for exanlple, A. Gordon argued that the steam carriage (as
it was called then) should run on lanes of granite. It was deemed inlpossible to
produce enough iron for even the very small number of railway lines being
planned at that tinle. [F3,4]
It must be kept in mind that the magnificent urban views opened up by new
constmctions in iron-Giedion, in bis Bauen in Frankreich (illustrations 61-63),
gives excellent examples with the Pont Transbordeur in Marseilles-for a long
time were evident only to workers and engineers. 0 Marxism 0 For in those days
who besides the engineer and the proletarian had climbed the steps that alone
made it possible to recognize what was new and decisive about these stmctures:
the feeling of space? [F3,5]
In 1791 ? the term ingenieur began to be used in France for those officers skilled in
the arts of fortification and siege. At the same time? and in the same country, the
opposit.ion between 'construction' and 'architecture" began to make itself felt; and
before long it figured in personal attacks. This antithesis had been entirely unknown
in the past. . .. But in the innumerable aesthetic treatises which after the
storms of the Revolution guided French art back into regular channels, ... the
constructeurs stood opposed to the decorateurs, and with this the further question
arose: Did not the ingenieurs, as the allies of the former necessarily occupy with
them, socially speaking, a distinct camp?" A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten (Esslingen,
1907), p. 3. [F3,6]
'The technique of stone architecture is stereotomy; that of wood is tectonics. What
does iron construction have in common with the one or the other?" Alfred Gotthold
Meyer, Eisenbuuten (Esslingen, 1907) p. 5. "In stone we feel the natural
spirit of the mass. Iron is, for us, only artificially compressed durability and
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