Book Excerpt: architectural designer is a mere milliner in stone, informed in thoseprevailing architectural fashions of which he himself knows little andcares less. Preoccupied as he is with the building's strength, safety, economy; solving new and staggeringly difficult problems with addressand daring, he has scant sympathy with such inconsequent matters asthe stylistic purity of a façade, or the profile of a moulding. To thedesigner, on the other hand, the engineer appears in the light of asubordinate to be used for the promotion of his own ends, or an evilto be endured as an interference with those ends.As a result of this lack of sympathy and co-ordination, success crownsonly those efforts in which, on the one hand, the stylist has beencompletely subordinated to engineering necessity, as in the case ofthe East River bridges, where the architect was called upon only toadd a final grace to the strictly structural towers; or on the otherhand, in which the structure is of the old-fashioned masonry sort, andRead More