PROMISE AND DANGER IN 
METHODS OF DESIGN 
By Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. 
T HE short article by Mr. Hastings in 
“ H ouse and Garden” for May, called 
“A Plea for Architectural Design in Land¬ 
scape,” contained a prefatory statement which 
was doubtless meant to express some idea 
full of the same intelligent appreciation that 
the author shows elsewhere, but which seems 
very perplexing to the reader*. It is in the 
hope of suggesting the way toward a clearer 
understanding of an important subject that I 
beg to offer the following comments. 
Mr. Hastings says: “To so study grades 
and landscape conditions as to make a drive 
from one country town to another econom¬ 
ical in construction, and to look well in the 
landscape and be of service when once built, 
is a purely practical question and one for the 
engineer;” and also that “designing the 
surroundings of buildings had been either 
an architectural problem or an engineering 
one, and there has seemed to be little room 
for anybody between the two.” 
What means the distinction; architectural 
and engineering? 
I n the broadest sense of the term, engi¬ 
neering includes all constructive work, all 
adapting of the materials and forces of nature 
to the service of man, whether the end be an 
economic one or an aesthetic one, and in this 
broader and nobler sense of engineering the 
architect is of course an engineer. But in 
the ordinary use of the term, an engineer is 
one whose aim is purely economic; while the 
aim of the architect is to meet not only the 
requirements of convenience and economy, 
but those of beauty. The architect may 
use the same materials and processes as the 
builder who is only an engineer, but he uses 
them under the impulse of an additional 
motive, that of the artist. Guidance by that 
motive and possession of qualities of mind 
and technical skill to bring that motive to 
successful fruition in the solution of the 
practical problems that are presented to him 
alone distinguish the true architect from the 
engineer who designs buildings. 
A parallel distinction is to be made in all 
fields of creative work. The manufacture of 
pulp into building paper with sole regard to 
serviceability and economy is a branch of 
industrial engineering, the materials and 
methods of which may be controlled more or 
less completely and successfully by an artistic 
motive in the manufacture of wall paper. So 
the craftsman, with single eye to economy 
of labor and material, who frames a strong 
though maybe uncouth bench is in a different 
class from his fellow, with the motive and 
skill of an artist, who makes his bench 
pleasing as well as strong. 
The vast range of engineering is divided 
into innumerable fields which correspond 
with different classes of problems, of mater¬ 
ials and of methods. Some of these fields 
are fairly distinct, have names, and hold the 
almost undivided attention of their followers; 
others are less generally recognized and are 
determined by the aptitudes and circum¬ 
stances of those who are engaged in them. 
The all-round civil engineers of olden days, 
like the general scientists who blazed the 
trails for modern special research, and like 
the versatile artists of the Renaissance, appear 
to have given way for the most part to 
specialists; we recognize the structural engi¬ 
neer, or builder of buildings, and the highway 
engineer, or builder of roads; we know sani¬ 
tary, electrical, hydraulic and mechanical 
engineers, mining engineers, and with them 
the expert technical managers of another 
great primal industry, foresters, or “forest 
engineers” as designated by Cornell Univer¬ 
sity. “Agricultural engineers” are well 
known in England, and the management of 
some of the great Western farming properties 
in this country requires technical training 
and executive ability quite of professional 
rank, although farming and gardening as 
commercially practiced are generally handi¬ 
crafts rather than industries in which the 
technical direction has become separated from 
the mechanical labor of execution. 
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