THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOUSE IN THE WORLD

Herman H. Lackner
3/30/92

Leader, Book Night

"The Most Beautiful House in the World" does not, of course,
exist except as the ill-conceived title of an eminently readable
and perceptive book by Witold Rybczinski. From his back-ground,
in his own words, "as a child of Polish parents in post-war Britain,
as a school-boy with an english accent, short pants, and an unpro-
nounceable name in a small town in Canada, and as an anglais in
french-speaking Quebec" Professor Rybczinski of McGill University
examines an enormous variety of factors relating to the quality of
design of our built environment, as well as the quality of its
builders and the felicity of its occupants. This is neither a manual
of the "How To Build A Cold Frame for Future Expansion to the Crystal
Palace" variety nor is it a critique of contemporary design. It is,
instead, the story of designing and building a shelter from conception
to completion. (In building houses conception is never immaculate
and completion relates only to the receipt of waivers of lien.) The
chapters follow the sequence in which an orderly mind would approach
the goal of achieving a practical, aesthetically pleasing, and
emotionally satisfying shelter while, at the same time, providing
a framework from which every imaginable digression seems reasonable
and, in the end, logical and necessary to the reader's involvement
in the development of the matter in hand.

A glance at the Table of Contents shows the spring-boards from
which the author dives into pools both lucid and provocatively murky:

Wind and Water; The Building Game; Making Space; Fitting In; Just A
Barn; Chrysalis; The Mind's Eye - sounds like the Scheme of Exercises
of the Chicago Literary Club, doesn't it?

The decline and fall of quality - real, imagined, or
reversible - engages our attention this evening. Is the
solution education, hibernation, or expanding the principles
of birth control to include product control as suggested by
Bernard Berenson. This problem will be examined by Bill Beauman
as he reviews "Galileo's Revenge" by Peter W. Huber and then
by David Maher reviewing "The Making of Moral Theology". I
will initiate the proceedings with a review of Witold Rybczinski
"The Most Beautiful House In The World".

"Wind and Water" describes a city-dweller’s desire to build
a boat, which necessitates finding a place to do so, and then
building a shed in which to do it, which results - would you believe
- in building a house, which results in this book. Choosing a site
begins with a lyrical description of meadow and orchard, gnarled
trees, blue skies and environmental responsibility. Almost sub-
liminally we are lured into the Taoist philosophy of Feng-shui
with barely a nod to geomancy and hepatoscopy before we come up
for air with anecdotes bubbling all around.

Ruskin, who said that "hundreds of people can talk for one
who can think", without aligning himself with either group, and
Sir Nickolaus Pevsner in his classic "Outline of European Architecture"
as well as the great body of today's tourists, agree that "It is
very necessary to distinguish carefully between architecture and
building". This author and I disagree. To define architecture Prof.
Rybczinski quotes the first english translation of Vitruvius (itself
the first How To ... Manual, published in 1624) : "Well building
hath three conditions: Commoditie, Firmeness, and Delight". In
other words: convenient and logical planning; sound, economical
construction; and beauty, both inherent and contextual. Furthermore
every element of the building must address these three conditions,
thus eliminating that Victorian staple, the Queen Anne front with a
Mary Anne behind.

A discussion of architects, with foibles and idiosyncrasies
scarcely mentioned, leads, via working techniques and presentations,
to models of projects, thence to miniatures, thence to toys and their
history, their role in education and character development, thence

to games (including house of cards), thence to psychology and Bruno

Bettelheim, fetching up in Carl Jung's garden.

One of the charms of this book is the circuitry and dexterity
of the author's lines of reasoning. Fortunately the clarity of his
prose steers a straight course between the Scylla of Frank Lloyd
Wright and the Charybdis of Vitruvious,  Alberti, and Palladio, the
classical arbiters of form and taste - especially having arrived
there by way of Peter Collins' Gastronomic Analogy (itself enough
to afflict one with mal de mer in a mill pond). Equally deft is the
transition to a brilliant analysis of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth
House and the perfection of its relation to its site. "Fitting In"
is even more magnificently exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright's
complete integration of "Falling Water", the Kaufman house at Bear
Run, into a most demanding and exciting site - to say nothing of
its integration into the pattern of the Owners' life. Or was it the
other way around? The elegant proportions and refined design of
the Petit Trianon are shown to suit its function just as the solidity
and classic simplicity of the Villa Rotunda express its more bucolic
role. (Of this building Goethe noted in his diary:" never has art
accomplished such a pitch of magnificence".) The whimsicalities of
Abbotsford, the exuberance of the Samuel Clemens house in Hartford,
and the idiosyncratic charm of Robert Louis Stevenson's Vailima are
observed as expressions of the unique character of the Owners, while
the serenity of the Pazzi Chapel illustrates the ultimate aim of
beauty to fit the building to its spiritual purpose.

"There is no longer any consensus about what constitutes either
beauty or good taste" says Mr. Rybczinski. Which is to say that
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about good taste?
Good taste is what no-one admits to lacking but secretly enjoys
noting as a deficiency in others. It may be innate or cultivated, as

severe as Shaker furniture or as flamboyant as the Sistine ceiling,
molded by Berenson, or advocated by Prince Charles. Above all it is
the essential quality of the apprehension of beauty and beauty,
according to Keats is truth and truth, according to Milton, is as
impossible to soil as a sunbeam.

On the other hand democracy guarantees equal rights to the
exercise and enjoyment of bad taste. The National Endowment For The
Arts, while nurturing free artistic expression, in spite of Jesse
Helms, can make no judgements. So Mapplethorp's photographs and
inferior paintings of Harold Washington may hang on the same
gallery wall as Whistler's Mother. Television, international banking,
evangelism, politics - all explore new and sordid depths of vulgarity
without restraint or forbearance. (A major new offering at the 89th
Toy Fair in Manhattan was "Monster Face", a life-size skull with
blistering boils, nose-slime drip and quivering bugs and worms.)
Thus it becomes ever more difficult to find - and, indeed, to define
beauty and good taste in the space in which we live. Rybczinski
declares that "Making space is a social art. . . always part of a
larger context - of a landscape, of other buildings, of a street and
finally, of our every-day lives". Could there be a more impassioned
plea for the pursuit of excellence through diligent exploration of
every facet of "Commoditie, Firmeness, and Delight"?