DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19489#0035
I.
THE FORMAL METHOD
3
please ; in a word, you can so control and
modify the grounds as to bring nature into
harmony with the house, if you cannot bring
the house into harmony with nature. The
harmony arrived at is not any trick of imitation,
but an affair of a dominant idea which stamps
its impress on house and grounds alike.
Starting, then, with the house as our datum,
we have to consider it as a visible object, what
sort of thing it is that we are actually looking
at. A house, or any other building, considered
simply as a visible object, presents to the eye
certain masses arranged in definite planes and
proportions, and certain colours distributed in
definite quality and quantity. It is regular, it
presents straight lines and geometrical curves.
Any but the most ill-considered efforts in
building—anything with any title to the name
of architecture — implies premeditated form in
accordance with certain limits and necessities.
However picturesque the result, however bravely
some chimney breaks the sky-line, or some
gable contradicts another, all architecture implies
restraint, and if not symmetry, at least balance.
There is order everywhere and there is no
escaping it. Now, suppose this visible object
dropped, let us say from heaven, into the
middle of a piece of ground, and this piece of
ground laid out with a studied avoidance of all
order, all balance, all definite lines, and the
result must be a hopeless disagreement between
THE FORMAL METHOD
3
please ; in a word, you can so control and
modify the grounds as to bring nature into
harmony with the house, if you cannot bring
the house into harmony with nature. The
harmony arrived at is not any trick of imitation,
but an affair of a dominant idea which stamps
its impress on house and grounds alike.
Starting, then, with the house as our datum,
we have to consider it as a visible object, what
sort of thing it is that we are actually looking
at. A house, or any other building, considered
simply as a visible object, presents to the eye
certain masses arranged in definite planes and
proportions, and certain colours distributed in
definite quality and quantity. It is regular, it
presents straight lines and geometrical curves.
Any but the most ill-considered efforts in
building—anything with any title to the name
of architecture — implies premeditated form in
accordance with certain limits and necessities.
However picturesque the result, however bravely
some chimney breaks the sky-line, or some
gable contradicts another, all architecture implies
restraint, and if not symmetry, at least balance.
There is order everywhere and there is no
escaping it. Now, suppose this visible object
dropped, let us say from heaven, into the
middle of a piece of ground, and this piece of
ground laid out with a studied avoidance of all
order, all balance, all definite lines, and the
result must be a hopeless disagreement between