Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The Art of Architecture
Aired: 2025-03-12
Duration: 04:09


=== The Parthenon Debate (03:17) ===

[00:00:00]  So, when Howard Rourke is meeting with the dean, fantastic, right?
[00:00:05]  This speech changed my life.
[00:00:07]  So Howard Rourke says, but I don't understand.
[00:00:09]  Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?
[00:00:12]  He pointed to a picture of the Parthenon.
[00:00:14]  That, said the dean, is the Parthenon.
[00:00:17]  So it is.
[00:00:18]  I haven't the time to waste on silly questions.
[00:00:20]  All right, then.
[00:00:21]  Rourke got up.
[00:00:22]  He took a long ruler from the desk.
[00:00:24]  He walked to the picture.
[00:00:26]  Shall I tell you what's wrong with it?
[00:00:28]  It's the Parthenon, said the dean.
[00:00:31]  Yes, goddammit, the Parthenon.
[00:00:33]  The ruler struck the glass over the picture.
[00:00:35]  Look, said Rourke, the famous flutings on the famous columns, what are they there for?
[00:00:39]  To hide the joints in wood when columns were made of wood.
[00:00:42]  Only these aren't.
[00:00:43]  They're marble.
[00:00:44]  The triglyphs, what are they?
[00:00:46]  Wood.
[00:00:46]  Wooden beams.
[00:00:47]  The way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks.
[00:00:51]  Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it because others had done it that way.
[00:00:58]  Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood.
[00:01:03]  Now here we are making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood.
[00:01:08]  Why?
[00:01:09]  The dean sat and watched him curiously.
[00:01:11]  Something puzzled him, not in the words, but in Rourke's manner of saying them.
[00:01:15]  Rules, said Rourke.
[00:01:16]  Here are my rules.
[00:01:18]  What can be done with one substance must never be done with another.
[00:01:22]  No two materials are alike.
[00:01:23]  No two sites on earth are alike.
[00:01:26]  No two buildings have the same purpose.
[00:01:28]  The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape.
[00:01:32]  Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea.
[00:01:37]  And the idea sets every detail.
[00:01:40]  A building is alive, like a man.
[00:01:44]  Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose.
[00:01:50]  A man doesn't borrow hunks of his soul.
[00:01:54]  Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it.
[00:01:58]  But all the proper forms of expression have been discovered long ago.
[00:02:02]  Expression of what?
[00:02:04]  The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor.
[00:02:10]  An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon.
[00:02:13]  Every form has its own meaning.
[00:02:16]  Every man creates its meaning and form and goal.
[00:02:19]  Why is it so important?
[00:02:23]  What others have done?
[00:02:24]  Why is anyone and everyone right, so long as it is not yourself?
[00:02:29]  Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic, and only of addition at that?
[00:02:34]  Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else?
[00:02:37]  There must be some reason.
[00:02:39]  I don't know.
[00:02:40]  I've never known it.
[00:02:41]  I'd like to understand.
[00:02:43]  For heaven's sake!
[00:02:44]  Said the dean.
[00:02:45]  Sit down!
[00:02:46]  That's better.
[00:02:47]  Do you mind very much putting that ruler down?
[00:02:49]  Thank you.
[00:02:50]  Now, listen to me.
[00:02:52]  No one has ever denied the importance of modern techniques to be in architecture.
[00:02:56]  We must learn to adapt the beauty of the past to the needs of the present.
[00:03:01]  The voice of the past, the voice of the people.
[00:03:04]  Nothing has ever been invented by one man in architecture.
[00:03:07]  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 (00:52) ===

[00:03:17]  But you see, said Rock quietly, I have, let's say, Sixty years to live.
[00:03:23]  Most of that time will be spent working.
[00:03:26]  I've chosen the work I want to do.
[00:03:28]  If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture.
[00:03:32]  And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me.
[00:03:37]  But the best is a matter of standards, and I set my own standards.
[00:03:41]  I inherit nothing.
[00:03:43]  I stand at the end of no tradition.
[00:03:45]  I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.
[00:03:50]  How old are you?
[00:03:52]  Asked the dean.
[00:03:53]  Twenty-two, said Rourke.
[00:03:55]  Oh, quite excusable, said the dean.
[00:03:58]  He seemed relieved.
[00:04:00]  You'll outgrow all of that, he smiled.
[00:04:02]  The old standards have lived for thousands of years, and nobody has been able to improve upon them.
[00:04:07]  Boom!
[00:04:08]  That's so good.
[00:04:09]  So good.