The Mission of The Glasgow Architectural Society [1]

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[Glasgow Architectural society

The first meeting of the session was held last evening as a conversazione, and exhibition of drawings, photographs and other works of art, at the Scottish Exhibition Rooms, Bath Street. Mr Alex. Thomson, architect, the president of the society for the year, occupied the chair. There was a large attendance of the members of the society and their friends. After a service of tea and coffee, Mr William McLean, writer, the honorary secretary, read the… annual report…

Mr Alexander Thomson, the chairman, then said – ]

I esteem it a very high honour to be named President of the Glasgow Architectural Society. But my deficiency in the various qualities requisite for promoting the interests of the society is a great drawback to the gratification which your appointment would otherwise have afforded me; to the energy, the tact, the experience, and the ready utterance so essential to the character of a president, I have no pretension. As most of you know all this, I accept the appointment as a pure act of grace, and can only thank you for it. I shall, however, endeavour under your indulgence to make up in zeal what I lack in ability.

Gentlemen, on an occasion like the present, when there is so much to see, it would be most imprudent of me to take up much of your time with speaking. But, for the sake of those strangers who have honoured us with their presence, it may be desirable that I should briefly allude to what may be considered the mission of the society. Its object is not merely technical. We do not wish to wrap our art in mystery, in order to gain an ascendancy over a superstitious public. On the contrary, I believe that it is the experience of every competent practitioner that the more his client knows of architecture the less he will interfere with the carrying out of his views.

It is most desirable that all connected with building – the representatives of the various trades – the measurer, the architect, the client, and the general public, should meet on the same platform, that each should understand the relation which he bears, and the duties he owes, to those around him and to the whole, and by their united efforts to take architecture to that position which it has occupied in the best periods of the world’s history. The tradesman ought not to be content with merely fulfilling his contract, so as to secure his price – he should find his chief pleasure in his calling, giving it the best attention that any worldly pursuit deserves. Let everything be done honestly and satisfactorily. Let him make himself acquainted with all scientific methods of construction, with the properties of the materials with which he has to deal. He should understand as much of architecture and architectural expression as enable him to bring out the spirit of any work put into his hands.

The architect’s education should embrace all these, and it is incumbent on him that he practise them with great care. But he has, besides, another class of duties to perform; and, first of all, he has to fill his heart with wisdom, and to exercise his mind with great thoughts, for the end and aim of his art is to express these. To aid him in so doing, let him search the whole world of nature and art for modes of expression, not that he may quote them entire and unchanged, but that he may learn from them something of the nature and meaning of lines, of forms, of proportion, of light and shade, and of colour. Let his imagination be filled with images rather than his memory with modes. How often have we heard it said, that architecture was a finished art – that every form of it had been wrought out. I have never allowed myself to think so, and it is gratifying to observe, that during the last few years, our illustrated periodicals bear evidence of the approach of an era of life and progress, and I hope to see the day when it will not be considered necessary to answer the question, “What style do you call that?” but when every man will have his own style, as in literature.

To our clients, I would say, do not put yourselves above your advisers. The absurdity of such a course seems evident enough, one would think, and yet it is the one usually followed. Taste is supposed to be a thing inherent to every man who can afford to indulge in its practice, and yet the fact is that the greatest disparity exists towards the outer rim of the social wheel. As we approach the centre, we find men agree as to general principles, and certain objects exist which all men of intelligence pronounce to be beautiful. Our taste changes with our experience, and the more we know the more pleasure we derive from the study of art. I think no sensible man would be guilty of perpetrating in stone and lime the crude notions of the hour, when, by giving his architect judicious latitude he would be almost sure to get something that would afford him permanent pleasure. Our friends, the measurers, have much to do in simplifying estimates and accounts, and I am hoping to learn that our attention is to be called to this subject during the present session.

Notes

1.    Alexander Thomson’s presidential address to the Glasgow Architectural Society was given on 19th October 1861 after the business of the first meeting of the second session. The text published here is taken from the report of the meeting printed in the Glasgow Herald for 22nd October 1861, but incorporating corrections from the shorter report in the North British Daily Mail for 22nd October 1861.