Architecture/Tradition ...


 (Continued from Page 10)
quantity of students, length of con-
struction time.

 One of the problems we have
with numbers and architectural de-
sign is that we have not yet found
a way to measure beauty, elegance,
or grace. Is it because these things
are not tangible? Of course not -
we can use numbers to define all
sorts of non-tangible things -
weight, time, speed, heat and
we have assigned units to these
things pounds, hours, miles per
hour, degrees F. Perhaps the
trouble is that we have no units
for beauty. Heat is measured by
dimensional change in mercury
produced by expansion. Perhaps
we need a beauty scale. Larsen
Hall at Harvard, then, might be
"8 degrees Caudill."


 Of course that's foolish because
beauty doesn't mean anything spe-
cific; it's a term that we use to
cover a whole concert of emotional
responses. Beauty is a highly per-
sonal reaction. It's inconsistent
and unpredictable. Furthermore
our problems of ugliness are prob-
lems of confusion, not of willful
malice. And if, as architects, we
limit ourselves to solving only
visual problems, we limit ourselves
unduly.

 The computer as an informa-
tion machine can help us to bring
order, to think with more disci-
pline, and to establish, through
knowledge, reasonable limits of
design freedom. And thus, we will
continue to build a more viable
tradition in architecture.


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