The Arcades Project - Operi

form are, as it were, more homogeneous:' A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten (Esslingen,
1907), p. 23. [F3a,5]
1840-1844: 'The construction of fortifications, inspired by Thiel's. . Thiel's,
who thought that railroads would never work, had gates constructed in Paris at
the very moment when railroad stations were needed." Dubech and d'Espezel,
Histoire de Paris (Paris, 1926), p. 386. [F3a,6]
"From the fifteenth century onward, this nearly colorless glass, in the form of
window panes, rules over the house as well. 11,e whole development of interior
space obeys the command: 'More light!"-In seventeenth-century Holland, this
development leads to window openings that, even in houses of the middle class,
ordinarily take up almost half the wall . ... / The abundance of light occasioned
by this practice must have . . . soon become disagreeable. Within the room,
curtains offered a relief that was quickly to become, through the overzealous art
of the upholsterer, a disaster . ... / The development of space by means of glass
and iron had come to a standstill. / Suddenly, however, it gained new strength
from a perfectly inconspicuous source. / Once again, this source was a 'house;
one designed to 'shelter the needy; but it was a house neither for mortals nor for
divinities, neither for hearth fires nor for inanimate goods; it was, rather, a house
for plants. / The origin of all present-day architecture in iron and glass is the
greenllouse:' A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten, p. 55. 0 Light in the Arcades 0 Mirrors 0
The arcade is the hallmark of the world Proust depicts. Curious that, like this
world, it should be bound in its origin to the existence of plants. [F4,1]
On the Crystal Palace of 1851: "Of all the great things about this work, the greatest,
in every sense of the word, is the vaulted central hall . ... Now, here too, at
first, it was not a space-articulating architect who did the talking but a-gardener
. ... This is literally true: the main reason for the elevation of the central
hall was the presence, in this section of Hyde Park, of magnificent elm trees, which
neither the Londoners nor Paxton himself' wished to see felled. Incorporating them
into his giant glass house, as he had done earlier with the exotic plants at
Chatsworth, Paxton almost unconsciously-but nonetheless fundamentally-enhanced
the architectural value of his construction." A. G. Meyer, Ei,senbauten
(Esslingen, 1907), p. 62. [F4,2]
In opposition to the engineers and builders, (Charles-Franois> Viel, as architect,
publishes his extremely violent, comprehensive polemic against static calculation,
under the title De l'Impuissance des mathematiques pour assure,. la solidite des
butiTnents