The Arcades Project - Operi

allow our steel furnishings of today to be what they are, shiny and clean, a
hundred years ago men took great pains, by means of subtle coating techniques,
to make it appear that iron furniture-which was already being produced by
then-was crafted from the finest wood. It was at this time that manufacturers
began to stake tlleir reputations on bringing out glasses that looked like porce­
lain, gold jewelry resembling leatller straps, iron tables with the look of wicker­
work, and other such things.
None of these efforts succeeded in covering over the chasm which the develop­
ment of technology had opened up between the builder of the new school and
the artist of the old type. Raging underneath was the battle between the academic
architect, with his concern for stylistic forms, and the engineer, who dealt in
formulas. As late as 1805, a leader of ti,e old school published a work witll the
title: "On the Uselessness of Mathematics for Assuring the Stability of Build­
ings:' 2 When this struggle finally, toward the end of the century, was decided in
favor of the engineers, a reaction set in: an effort to renew art on the basis of
technology's own rim store of forms. This was Jugendstil. At the same tinle,
however, that heroic age of technology found its monument in the incomparable
Eiffel Tower, of which the first historian of iron construction wrote: "Thus, the
plastic shaping power recedes here before a colossal span of spiritual energy ....
Every one of the twelve thousand metal fittings, each of the two and a half
million rivets, is machined to the millimeter . ... On this work site, one hears no
chisel-blow liberatiog form from stone; here, thought reigns over muscle power,
which it transmits via cranes and secure scaffolding.":l