The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable: In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning

The pristine, the ruined, the ephemeral, and even the notional are the
subject of Robert Harbison's highly original and admittedly romantic contribution to
the literature of architecture. His fresh perceptions open this practical art to new
interpretations as he explores the means by which buildings, real or imagined, evade
or surpass functional necessities while sometimes satisfying them.What fascinates
Harbison in these discussions are the paradoxes and ironies of function that give
rise to meaning, to a psychological impact that may or may not have been intended.
He chooses examples from an architectural borderland - of gardens, monuments, ideal
cities and fortification, ruins, paintings, and unbuildable buildings -where use and
symbolism overlap; he examines the exceptions at the edges of a field that will
illuminate its center.Harbison's pursuit of man's efforts to "fashion art from
nonhuman life" begins with a consideration of gardens and the organic architecture
of the English Arts and Crafts movement and of Gaudi, then turns to monuments (Claes
Oldenburg, Christo, the Vietnam Memorial) that are "either the nearest or the
furthest thing from gardens." Harbison's discussion of fortification and urban
planning leads to metaphorical themes (fort-features in churches or prisons or
Fascist municipal buildings) and mocked-up worlds (Williamsburg, Disneyland), and to
the subject of fictional space as expressed in ruins, in painting, in the
unbuildable, and finally in the inconceivable as revealed in Kafka's sketches.Robert
Harbison has lectured widely on architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, the University of Toronto, Stanford University, Cornell University, and the
Architectural Association, London. His previous books include Eccentric Spaces,
Deliberate Regression, and Pharaoh's Dream.