The Arcades Project - Operi

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