| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
The Parthenon Debate
00:03:17
|
|
| So, when Howard Rourke is meeting with the dean, fantastic, right? | |
| This speech changed my life. | |
| So Howard Rourke says, but I don't understand. | |
| Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture? | |
| He pointed to a picture of the Parthenon. | |
| That, said the dean, is the Parthenon. | |
| So it is. | |
| I haven't the time to waste on silly questions. | |
| All right, then. | |
| Rourke got up. | |
| He took a long ruler from the desk. | |
| He walked to the picture. | |
| Shall I tell you what's wrong with it? | |
| It's the Parthenon, said the dean. | |
| Yes, goddammit, the Parthenon. | |
| The ruler struck the glass over the picture. | |
| Look, said Rourke, the famous flutings on the famous columns, what are they there for? | |
| To hide the joints in wood when columns were made of wood. | |
| Only these aren't. | |
| They're marble. | |
| The triglyphs, what are they? | |
| Wood. | |
| Wooden beams. | |
| The way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. | |
| Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it because others had done it that way. | |
| Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. | |
| Now here we are making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. | |
| Why? | |
| The dean sat and watched him curiously. | |
| Something puzzled him, not in the words, but in Rourke's manner of saying them. | |
| Rules, said Rourke. | |
| Here are my rules. | |
| What can be done with one substance must never be done with another. | |
| No two materials are alike. | |
| No two sites on earth are alike. | |
| No two buildings have the same purpose. | |
| The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. | |
| Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea. | |
| And the idea sets every detail. | |
| A building is alive, like a man. | |
| Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. | |
| A man doesn't borrow hunks of his soul. | |
| Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it. | |
| But all the proper forms of expression have been discovered long ago. | |
| Expression of what? | |
| The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. | |
| An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. | |
| Every form has its own meaning. | |
| Every man creates its meaning and form and goal. | |
| Why is it so important? | |
| What others have done? | |
| Why is anyone and everyone right, so long as it is not yourself? | |
| Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic, and only of addition at that? | |
| Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? | |
| There must be some reason. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I've never known it. | |
| I'd like to understand. | |
| For heaven's sake! | |
| Said the dean. | |
| Sit down! | |
| That's better. | |
| Do you mind very much putting that ruler down? | |
| Thank you. | |
| Now, listen to me. | |
| No one has ever denied the importance of modern techniques to be in architecture. | |
| We must learn to adapt the beauty of the past to the needs of the present. | |
| The voice of the past, the voice of the people. | |
| Nothing has ever been invented by one man in architecture. | |
| The proper creative process is a slow, gradual, anonymous, collective one in which each man collaborates with all others and subordinates himself to the standards of the majority. | |
|
Standards of the Collective
00:00:52
|
|
| But you see, said Rock quietly, I have, let's say, Sixty years to live. | |
| Most of that time will be spent working. | |
| I've chosen the work I want to do. | |
| If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. | |
| And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. | |
| But the best is a matter of standards, and I set my own standards. | |
| I inherit nothing. | |
| I stand at the end of no tradition. | |
| I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one. | |
| How old are you? | |
| Asked the dean. | |
| Twenty-two, said Rourke. | |
| Oh, quite excusable, said the dean. | |
| He seemed relieved. | |
| You'll outgrow all of that, he smiled. | |
| The old standards have lived for thousands of years, and nobody has been able to improve upon them. | |
| Boom! | |
| That's so good. | |
| So good. | |