Would love to see Irene's slide
show. While there may be an ancient history of the cornice for
weather control in moist climates or in places such as Greece with enough
wealth to play with "beauty", surely the urban versions from the last
century or two have more to do with the human art of perception and
persuasion.
The absolutely brilliant book
"Facades" by Bill Cunningham makes a powerful point about the linked
relationship in any era between contemporary architectural style and clothing
style. For the grand era of urban cornices in NYC, look at photos of
the people on the streets. Everyone wore a hat, usually with a
brim, to top off their persona.
"Facades" traces two hundred years of
style with a photo for a style on each page.
It was photographed using examples in NYC with a single model being
the human throughout. She is stunning as she portrays and
illuminates the clothing and architectural styles of the passing
decades.
The theory really holds up. In
modern times, think the appearance of the Swatch Watch quickly followed by the
multi-patterned sports jackets with different fabrics on pockets and bisected
coloring of sleeves, all shockingly new and coincident with the rise of Post
Modern collaging of building facades.
Cornice = Hat = Appearance for
communication and inspiration. Rain and weather will be dealt with
in any structure as totally secondary topics of necessity.
Form Before Function got all mixed up and lost during the World Wars, and
our post-war architectural professors didn't learn about it so couldn't teach
it. We usually learned about Form Follows Function
without also learning about or respecting the other approach.
That is not to say that cornices do not
protect what is below them from a certain amount of weather, but that
really they are now more like our eyebrows in
function. They do a certain amount of protective work for the eyes
and probably evolved first for that purpose, but are now much more important as
communicators.
cp in bc
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