The Old Way of Seeing (And How to Get It Back) - Softcover

Hale, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039574010X ISBN 13: 9780395740101

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995

Synopsis

This fresh and provocative book answers a question that countless people have asked about our man-made world: How did things get so ugly? We have all admired the natural grace of old buildings and wondered why modern architects seem to have such a hard time creating their equal. We live in a time when only a few gifted and dedicated teams of designers can produce buildings that approach the beauty of these that eighteenth-century carpenters created all by themselves. What went wrong? In this fascinating tour of our buildings and our social history, Jonathan Hale examines the historical moment in the 1830s when builders and architects began to lose their sense of surety about what they were doing. He explores the societal pressures that turned buildings from pure efforts at expression into structures laden with symbols. Most important, he uncovers - in terms the lay reader can easily understand - the principles that animate great architecture, no matter what its style or period. In The

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

An architect and critic elaborates on what most of us see when we look at much of modern architecture: buildings that are lifeless and just plain ugly. Hale laments the current state of architecture and the loss of ``harmonious design,'' an art that involves play and intuition. ``A great building can give us the same exhilaration we experience in a natural landscape,'' he writes. He urges architects and designers to rediscover the beauties of natural law and geometry, to abandon the fragmentation he sees as characteristic of postmodern architecture. He offers a historical summary of how building strayed, in the middle of the 19th century coincident with the Industrial Revolution, from the intuitive verities of harmony and balance, forsaking meaningful patterns for crude symbolism or somber functionality. Photos. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

Intended for the lay reader, this primer on design explores a number of interesting byways, from symbolism to scale, context, regulating lines, and pattern languages. Practiced New England architect and architectural writer Hale offers a paean to the past, more specifically a preindustrial past when, in his words, "one could walk down any street and be surrounded by harmonious buildings." It all began to fall apart in the 1830s, according to Hale, when the Greek Revival replaced substance with symbol. Hale revolts at the prospect of a rampant industrialism and everything else Modern Architecture implied: internationalism, uniformity, and universalism. Gentle, wise, and perceptive, he is a child of postmodernism. Recommended for public libraries.
Peter Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 039574010X
• ISBN 13: 9780395740101
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256