404 STYLE IX ARCHITKCTURE. 



We must now face, in conclusion, a question which will 

 naturally arise to otu' minds. What style of architecture are 

 we really forming" to-day, and what will be our record in the 

 future histories of architecture ? There can be no doubt that 

 the last half-century will be called the age of iron construction. 

 To this the constructive genius of the last generation devoted 

 itself, and it was along this line of progress that the needs of 

 the age in organic building were in the man developed. In 

 all previous ages the architect and the engineer were one. The 

 common name of the great architects of Greece was 

 " Mechanikos," or engineer. They and the Roman architects 

 combined the practice of architecture with that of civil and mili- 

 tary engineering; so even under pressure did Leonardo di 

 Vinci and Alichael Angelo. But since the invention of Steel 

 construction the two professions have unhappily become 

 divorced, and there seems little hope at present of reconcilia- 

 tion. Yet the greatest engineers, when they make no fatuous 

 attempts to disguise their construction and material, do pro- 

 duce real and great works of art. The Forth Bridge is a 

 famous instance of the right use of iron work. On the other 

 hand, engineers too often fall so low as to mock their own 

 handiwork, encasing noble construction w'ith sham Gothic 

 towers, as in the Tower Bridge over the Thames. 



The probability is that the feeling" of the perishableness of 

 iron withdraws it from the sphere of pure architecture, but in 

 this 20th century we see the dawn of a new material which mav 

 revolutionise architecture. I refer to reinforced concrete, the 

 recent invention of stiiTening concrete with fibres of steel in the 

 form of thin rods and wires. We are, I believe, just awaken- 

 ing to the possibilities of this new means to om^ hand, both in 

 architectiu'e as w-ell as in engineering. The success of it. from 

 an artistic point of view, depends, I think, on the mechanical 

 skill in the architects or in the trained taste and architectural 

 knowledge in the engineer of the future: or. more happilv. in 

 the re-marriage of the Professor of Architecture with the I'ro- 

 fessor of Engineering. 



The new art will come about, not by clapping" on meaning- 

 less styles or orders of architecture to the form and masses of 

 the concrete, but by moulding" to shape and use and beauty 

 those forms and masses that are natural for the new material. 

 If I may be forgiven a prophecy, my belief is that, as the 2nd 

 century A.l). is considered the age of Roman concrete, the 

 13th century the age of stone vaulting, the i6th the age of 

 the uplifted dome, so the 20th century will be recorded as that 

 of reinforced concrete architecture. 



I do not mean that this new building invention will materially 

 affect our every day domestic, business or ecclesiastical build- 

 ings. These will, t hope, develop along" the more conservative 

 grooves of tradition. But it will undoubtedly in the future 

 affect the design of those larger buildings in which constructive 

 and engineering" difficulties are involved. How far it will in- 

 fluence them and carry forward the art of architecture, or bring 

 liack ei"igineering into the sphere of art. is one of the most im- 

 portant problems of the architectural future. 



