The Project Gutenberg eBook, Architecture and Democracy, by Claude Fayette
Bragdon

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Title: Architecture and Democracy

Author: Claude Fayette Bragdon

Release Date: June 15, 2004 [eBook #12625]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARCHITECTURE AND DEMOCRACY***

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ARCHITECTURE AND DEMOCRACY

BY

CLAUDE BRAGDON
F.A.I.A.

1918

[Illustration: PLATE I. THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING, NEW YORK]

PREFACE

This book can lay no claim to unity of theme, since its subjects range
from skyscrapers to symbols and soul states; but the author claims for
it nevertheless a unity of point of view, and one (correct or not) so
comprehensive as to include in one synthesis every subject dealt
with. For according to that point of view, a skyscraper is only a
symbol--and of what? A condition of consciousness, that is, a state of
the soul. Democracy even, we are beginning to discover, is a condition
of consciousness too.

Our only hope of understanding the welter of life in which we are
immersed, as in a swift and muddy river, is in ascending as near
to its pure source as we can. That source is in consciousness and
consciousness is in ourselves. This is the point of view from which
each problem dealt with has been attacked; but lest the author be at
once set down as an impracticable dreamer, dwelling aloof in an ivory
tower, the reader should know that his book has been written in
the scant intervals afforded by the practice of the profession of
architecture, so broadened as to include the study of abstract form,
the creation of ornament, experiments with color and light, and such
occasional educational activities as from time to time he has been
called upon to perform at one or another architectural school.

The three essays included under the general heading of "Democracy
and Architecture" were prepared at the request of the editor of _The
Architectural Record_, and were published in that journal. The two
following, on "Ornament from Mathematics," represent a recasting and
a rewriting of articles