The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable: In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning

The pristine the ruined the ephemeral and even the notional are the subject of Robert Harbisons highly original and admittedly romantic contribution to the literature of architecture. His fresh perceptions open this practical art to new interpretations as he explores the means by which buildings real or imagined evade or surpass functional necessities while sometimes satisfying them. What fascinates Harbison in these discussions are the paradoxes and ironies of function that give rise to meaning to a psychological impact that may or may not have been intended. He chooses examples from an architectural borderland - of gardens monuments ideal cities and fortification ruins paintings and unbuildable buildings -where use and symbolism overlap; he examines the exceptions at the edges of a field that will illuminate its center. Harbisons pursuit of mans efforts to "fashion art from nonhuman life" begins with a consideration of gardens and the organic architecture of the English Arts and Crafts movement and of Gaudi then turns to monuments (Claes Oldenburg Christo the Vietnam Memorial) that are "either the nearest or the furthest thing from gardens." Harbisons discussion of fortification and urban planning leads to metaphorical themes (fort-features in churches or prisons or Fascist municipal buildings) and mocked-up worlds (Williamsburg Disneyland) and to the subject of fictional space as expressed in ruins in painting in the unbuildable and finally in the inconceivable as revealed in Kafkas sketches.