Libro

Introduction by Frank Pick
Dr. Gropius has asked me to write an introduction to this essay. There seems little need for one. It is a plea for thinking out afresh all the problems of building in terms of current materials and of current tools, tools which have become elaborated into machines. It asks that what the past did for wood and brick and stone, the present shall do for steel and concrete and glass. It rightly claims that only out of such a fresh input of thought can a true architecture be established. What interests me still more, it proceeds to observe that what applies to architecture equally applies in those fields of design which relate to things of everyday use.
Such a plea comes at an opportune time, for a lively attention is being directed by more and more people to these problems. This generation is becoming conscious of art not as something apart and curious, but as something vital and essential to the fullest life, as something which will restore grace and order to society. It is a period of pause in expectation of some renascence of art of which the premonitory symptoms grow more numerous and distinct with each year. I am hopeful in my lifetime of enjoying some measure of its realization. Dr. Gropius has been a pioneer of this movement. He has through the Bauhaus made a decisive contribution to its realization. This country may count itself fortunate in being able to entertain him in this period of transition and to secure his guidance. It might even seek to utilize his knowledge and ability in accelerating the changes that must come, not only in architecture itself, but even more in the teaching of architecture and of art in its widest acceptation.
Dr. Gropius rightly points out that the `new architecture' begins by being stark and formal, and seeks norms or standards. This is a reaction from the welter of copying and adaptation of styles which have ceased to have significance in relation to modern building. But this reaction has almost spent itself, and the new architecture is passing from a negative phase to a positive phase seeking to speak not only through what it omits or discards, but much more through what it conceives and invents. Individual imagination and fancy will more and more take possession of the technical resources of the new architecture, of its spatial harmonies, of its fit functional qualities, and will use them as the ground work, or rather framework, of a new beauty which will crown this expected renascence with splendour. If the architect has in the reaction swung too far over towards the engineer he will, in the counterreaction, swing back again towards the artist. Progress flows from this wavelike motion. The creative spirit is ever resurgent. The tide relentlessly rises over breaking and receding waves. It is the rise of the tide that matters most.
Let me revert again from the architecture of buildings to suggest that there is some corresponding art, or science, or combination of both, relating to things. If things are to be rightly conceived and executed and to attract to themselves aesthetic qualities, then out of the technical and craft schools dealing with now this, now that thing, some overriding educational discipline and understanding must arise which will do for things what the new architecture will do for building. I could wish that Dr. Gropius had developed the hints and suggestions in his essay on this subject. It is a critical study for this moment. At one time I thought that maybe architects had limited the scope of their training too narrowly in relating it to building, especially when I saw them venturing into other fields of design such as furniture, decoration, pottery and so forth, but I see now that I was not right. The designer for industry must be placed alongside the architect, with a training equivalent in character, if directed towards another end, and with a status and authority equivalent too. Dr. Gropius must help to define this training and to explore its methods, once more repeating the experiments of the Bauhaus, with architecture as a mistress art certainly, but also with a new architectonic arising out of a collective understanding of design in industry.