The Arcades Project - Operi

The Arcades Project - Operi The Arcades Project - Operi

07.04.2013 Views

Interior of the Crystal Palace, London, from a photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot. See F4,2.

speak, 'concealed;" This last point pertains in a special sense to the arcades, whose walls have only secondarily the function of partitioning the hall; primarily, they serve as walls or faades for the commercial spaces within them. The pas­ sage is from A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten, p. 69. [F4,4) The arcade as iron construction stands on the verge of horizontal extension. That is a decisive condition for its "old-fashioned" appearance. It displays, in this regard, a hybrid character, analogous in certain respects to that of the Baroque church-"the vaulted 'hall' that comprehends the chapels only as an extension of its own proper space, which is wider than ever before. Nevertheless, an attraction 'from on high' is also at work in this Baroque hall-an npward-tending ecstasy, such as jubilates from the frescoes on the ceiling. So long as ecclesiastical spaces ann to be more than spaces for gathering, so long as they stlve to safeguard the idea of the eternal, they will be satisfied with nothing less than an overarching nnity, in which the vertical tendency outweighs the horizontal;' A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten, p. 74. On the other hand, it may be said that something sacral, a vestige of the nave, still attaches to this row of commodities that is the arcade. From a functional point of view, the arcade already occupies the field of horizon­ tal amplitude; architecturally, however, it still stands within the conceptual field of the old "hall;' [F4,5) The Galerie des Machines, built in 1889/ was torn down in 1910 out of artistic sadism." [F4,6) Historical extension of the horizontal: '"From the palaces of the Italian High Renaissance, the chateaux of the French kings take the 'gallery,' which-as in the case of the 'Gallery of Apollo' at the Louvre and the 'Gallery of Mirrors' at Versaillesbecomes the emblem of majesty itself .... / Its new triumphal advance in the nineteenth century begins under the sign of the purely utilitarian structure, with those halls known as warehouses and markets, workshops and factories; the problem of' railroad stations and, above all, of exhibitions leads it back to art. And everywhere the demanu for continuous horizontal extension is so great that the stone arch and the wooden ceiling can have only very limited applicatiolls . ... In Gothic structures, the walls turn into the ceiling, whereas in iron halls of the type . . . represented by the Gallery of Machines ill Paris, the ceiling slides over the walls without interruption." A. G. Meyer, Eisenbauten, pp. 74-75. [F4a,l) Never before was the criterion of the "Ininimal" so important. And that includes the minimal element of quantity: the "little;' the "few." '-These are dimensions that were well established in technological and architectural constructions long before literature made bold to adapt them. Fundamentally, it is a question of the earliest manifestation of the principle of montage. On building the Eiffel Tower: "Thns, the plastic shaping power abdicates here in favor of a colossal span of spiritual energy, which channels the inorganic material energy into the smallest, most efficient fonns and conjoins these fornls in the most effective

Interior of the Crystal Palace, London, from a photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot. See<br />

F4,2.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!