Читать книгу The Library of Work and Play: Home Decoration - Charles Franklin Warner - Страница 7

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Adaptation to Purpose.—Our young architects discovered that there are certain fundamental principles or laws that must be observed at the very beginning, if a really good and true design is to be made. The first of these laws is the law of adaptation to purpose. The application of this law was illustrated in the location of the various rooms in the plan of the house, in the dimensions agreed upon for each, and in the details of arrangement, especially in the kitchen and other rooms connecting with it. But this law is universal in its application. It determines not only the broad features of the plan but the details as well. It does not permit anything useless or superfluous to exist, for that would mean weakness. It aims at efficiency and strength. It dictates the details of construction all along the line, from the framing of the building to its finish and its decoration. It even determines the character of the furniture and the amount of it. Adaptation to purpose is a ruling principle.

Simplicity.—Another great principle that revealed itself as the plans of the house developed may be called the law of simplicity. This is one of the elementary laws of nature transferred to the realm of craftsmanship. It is an axiom of geometry that the straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Not less evident is the fact that when Nature undertakes to do anything she goes about it in the simplest and most direct way. The natural tendency of all motion is along a straight line—so reads the first law of motion. Analyze the most complex forms and processes of nature and we shall find them due to the harmonious combination of the simplest elementary lines and movements. But the same law of simplicity which invariably marks the works of nature gives strength and beauty also to the works of man. Thus, in discussing the various problems that developed as the designing of the house progressed, it was found—as of course it should have been—that the solution which met the test of simplicity, while satisfying the law of adaptation to purpose, was the true one.

Correlation.—A third great fundamental principle that found expression in these studies of the house plans was the principle of correlation. Not only must each part of the design be adapted to its use in the simplest possible manner, but it must support all other parts and receive support in return. It is like cooperation or team-work in play or in the practical affairs of life. Every room in a house bears some natural relation to every other room, and even the objects in the same room or in adjoining rooms must assist each other, whether their purpose be utility or decoration or a combination of both. Only by due attention to the mutual relations of the various elements that must enter into the composition, can the designer produce those pleasing space effects, those blendings of colour tones, those manifest relations between the various objects, useful or decorative, that give order, unity, and sympathetic feeling to a complete design.