Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/226

 210 THE BUILDING NEWS. Marca 15, 1872. [n= ee eee! of the cottage, as France is of the chateau, | the dictum of those who insist that its breadth Germany of the castle, and Italy of the palace and villa. A French or an Italian cottage is a sight unknown; there are plenty of little houses in both regions, but neither language contains the equivalent of our dear domestic word. All this applies to summer, when the flower-beds are bright, the fountains refresh- ing, the trees in full foliage, the vases shower- Inge over with flowers; but what of winter? Wothing more cheerless than a frozen fountain or an empty urn, or black beds of earth, not- withstanding that we may cheat ourselves by mosaicing the pathways into a semblance of gaiety. Of course, for those who can afford to have gardens expressly laid out for the barren season of the year, much may be done with ivy-covered walls, yew and holly hedges, élusters of evergreens, spaces spread with eoloured sands, variegated shrubs, stone-crop, Christmas roses, and so forth; but we have little to do with this section of the subject. Pavilions—strictly summer-houses—are out of place in a winter garden, as are also seats of every description, even in southern climates. We therefore go on to bridges, which, again quoting Mr. Arthur Hughes, are too often the works of mere engineers or ordinary archi- tects ; but not of garden architects, careful to render them a part of the landscape—part of the composition, indeed, regarded, as a garden should be regarded, in the light of a picture. It is comparatively easy to introduce a torrent bridge over a deep eleft in the earth, but exceedingly difficult to construct one over a wide, slow, fluctuat- ing meadow-stream, sometimes a river, and sometimes only a marsh, yet in many large parks this difficulty has been triumphantly met by long approaches, gradual ascents, a causeway joining the bridge at either end ; no very great solidity—since the -traflic over such structures is never heayy—the least con- eeiyable amount of ornament, no carving, «not even on the key stones ;” by all means no lamps, because gardens are for the day and not for the night ; but richly-planted ends to screen the water, and finally, no wood and no iron work, but lightly arched stone. Tron rails, supplementing a parapet, are simply hideous, and belong to that which we are disposed to call the market-garden style. It is impossible to reconcile them with any beauty of building, or with the summer grace of green and brilliance which is the charm of agarden. The Italians are great masters of this bridge-building art in pleasure- grounds, whereas the French, as at Fontain- bleau, generally stunt their structures, be- sides preferring pools to streams, which speedily converts the stone, as well as the water, into a mass of unwholesome green. Of course, there are lakes on many estates, but with proper care they can always be kept as pellucid as a mountain rivulet. It may be added, on this topic, that timber bridges are permissible in ‘* wildernesses” and wooded localities. But nothing equals the crenellated Gothie structure, without piercings of the parapet, except slight edifices of rustic de- sign, for foot use only, merely serving to earry ona path ; and here the design may be fantastic. But, apropos, those who construct bridges have frequently to outline lakes, and can this be called building? Certainly so; for the walls of the lake, properly designed, are as much architecture as the arches that pass between them. Nature assists a great deal with the level; but art exca- vates, embanks, piles up islets, guides the flow of the springs, opens soft bays on the margin for the deer to drink at and the kine to cool themselves in—whither, too, Landseer and Cooper and Cuyp might bring their easels—cultivates a bed of rushes, prepares a dam, arranges deceptive turns of the perspee- tive, and cclours the miniature coast with flowering plants, breaking up all into such vistas as Addison describes in his ‘+ Vision of Mirza.” A lake in a garden, or rather, park, ought to have no discernible limit—that is, as to length. It is not easy to coincide with can at every point be similarly concealed— an impossibility, in our opinion, unless the elegance of a broad, brilliant stretch of water were sacrificed for the sake of an illusion. By all means, let there be a boathouse in the bay—not too refined in its structure; with a touch of improvisation about it; neat, clean, and pure, but not of foreign design ; some- thing like the boat itself, shaped for a special use, with a picnic appearance; unless the lord of the domain has been inspired by those foolish cockneys who launch Venetian gon- dolas on English artificial lakes where there is neither water nor atmosphere for a gondola to live in properly, and build belvederes as though they dwelt in the land of Juliet. An English park is not an Alpine valley: still less is it a lagoon of the Adriatic. We must conform to the exigencies of the country, and not expect to change them either by building “ Devil’s Bridges,” which are suited only to scenes of vast ruggedness, or by renting from water companies the materials of sham Tivoli cascades, and hollowing out grottoes wherin our humanity only feels bored and shivers. These suggestions may not be without their use for those who have not had opportunities of studying the standard works on the sub- ject, or of comparing, as it has been a signal pleasure for us to do, the styles of gardens and garden building among various nations of Europe. But there is one garden to which we haye not alluded, and itis the Russian. When the competition at Florence takes place next spring may we hope for some examples of this phenomenon, usually composed of a glass-house, a hut, and some erysanthemums. ieee’ COLOURING PLANS T is much to be wished that architects could devise some uniform system on which to colour their drawings. We do not now refer to perspectives, which, when coloured at all, show rather too much uni- formity. The mechanical art of tinting views to please committees has become consider- ably more mechanical than it need be, and we should not be surprised to see it super- seded by the publication of chromo-litho- graphed sheets, with a sky at top, men, women, and horses at the bottom, and a blank for the building in the middle. ‘The colouring which, on the contrary, we should be glad to have regulated by rules, is that of working drawings: plans, sections, elevations, and details. The great object aimed at here is to prevent mistakes: to make the quantity surveyor, the builder, the clerk of works, and the foreman clearly understand the architect’s intention. In the present state of things almost every office has its own traditions on the subject: In one, stonework is represented by yellow, in another by brown, in a third by blue. Brick in section may be lake or carmine or Indian red: in elevation it may assume an indescribable multitude of dif- ferent hues. Fir timber, by the custom of one office, is tinted gamboge, by that of an- other with burnt sienna, by that of a third with Vandyke brown, while these two last colowrs are not uncommonly reserved to dis- tinguish oak. Cast iron is most frequently indicated by neutral tints ; so is slate, so, in elevations, is glass, so is lead, and so, not un- frequently, is plaster. That neutral tint may, indeed, be used with a difference, but the difference is small, while in faint washes it disappears altogether. That grand layer of neutral tint, in the shape of dirt, with which drawings in actual use soon get overlaid, obliterates all minor distinctions. if the form of a detail were not a better guide to its material than the colour often is, mistakes would be the rule instead of the exception: practical men, however, know what to expect, and soon learn to rely on experience and common sense. It is, perhaps, in the process of taking out quantities that a good colour-system would be most valuable. The builder, or the work- man, has time to study the drawings, and opportunity to ask questions when he feels un- certain ; the surveyor very frequently has not much of either. An important structural detail, again, makes itself looked for when the work is actually proceeding. There is no doing without it, and however obscurely it may be shown, it can hardly escape the keen serutiny which, as the case may be, is seeking proof either of its presence or its absence. No such impossibility of proceeding calls the attention of the quantity-taker to his lapses : he may omit the foundations to his walls, or the piers to his arches, or the ties to his roof, and the first. and only sign of their absence will be the absence of a certain amount of eash from the contractor’s pocket. It is, therefore, very desirable that every item in- cluded in the contract should be put clearly before him; that the details of each trade should be not merely shown, but shown con- spicuously. To this end we think that a greater diversity of colours might be advan- tageously used. There is too much prefer- ence in ordinary practice for browns and grays, colours which may be use- ful enough in imitating the materials to be dealt with, but which are not sufficiently marked or distinctive to stand for them in a conventional scale. Conventional, to a greater or less extent, the scale must evidently be. It is impossible in a drawing of eight or ten feet to an inch to distinguish wood and stone and metal from each other by their actual hues The space they occupy is too small ; an area the size of a pin’s head must be brightly tinted if it is to show at all, and still more so if it is to be distinguished by its tint from other areas not much bigger. It, therefore, becomes a question whether positive colours have not been for this purpose unduly neglected. Cobalt blue and emerald green might, we think, be taken into use with ad- vantage, to supersede some of the brown and j neutral shades which have at present to do double work. The only apparent objec tion is the misleading effect of such colours in elevations ; but it may beaquestion whether - an architect will in any case be wise in judg- ing by elevations alone of the future effect of his work. - ——_———_ THE PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN.—IL. (Continued from page 127.) (pee natural order of ideas which occupy the mind in the process of design I have endeavoured to point out, with a view of indicating, as far as possible, a rational mode of procedure in place of that vague, indefinable mode, or that presentiment of fancy, which partial education, association, or bias too often determines. ‘Take, for ex- ample, a window. What should be the rational process in the design of one? First, there is the simple abstract idea of light which has to be admitted. This may be regarded as intuitive, the connection between an aperture and light being immediately cog- nisable. orm is the next step—that form which is best suitable to admit light viewed, firstly, in an abstract sense without reference to structure or material, and, secondly, with regard to this connection. Whether we consider the agency of light on the emission or the undulatory theory, the fact that light is propagated in right lines through space or every homogeneous medium is acknow- ledged, and air and glass are the two media which the architect has to consider. We know, too, that it is propagated through the air in all directions by its extreme tenuity or vibratory motion of the luminiferous ether, If intercepted by opaque bodies the rays change their direction, or, in optical language, are either reflected or refracted. ‘Through these agen- cies, and the ordinary state of our atmosphere, light is pretty equally diffused. Atthe same time, we are obliged to consult the direct source of our light—the solar beams, and