By investigating different types of spaces, Robert Harbison attempts to understand architectural meaning in his book The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable. Each chapter in Harbisonís book examines a different facet of architecture: gardens, monuments, fortification/ideal cities, ruins, paintings, and unbuildable buildings. Harbison incorporates the full range of architectural expression to more fully explore the meaning and symbolism conveyed by architecture. Moreover, Harbisonís book seeks to find the forms and symbols that a majority of people can understand.

In the first chapter, Harbison posits that the garden is free from a strict function. Whether the garden is designed in a French formal or English picturesque style, the political and social ideas which the garden articulates are central to the experience of the garden. Not limiting himself to the traditional study of French and English gardens, Harbison links them to Japanese gardens by comparing the Eastern garden to the great European maze gardens. The Japanese gardens, although calculated, provide a sense of both cosmic order and chaos. Harbisonís inclusive study leads him to conclude that the garden as an architectural form represents the oneness of man and nature, the highest accord.

Unike gardens, monuments serve a strict function, the one implied by their very name. Harbisonís evaluation of monuments presents some ideas that challenge the traditional language of monumental architecture. Although one is familiar with essentially classical temples, ancient columns, and arches (which, more often than not, lead to nowhere), Harbison questions why monuments built in recent history retain this ìexhausted vocabularyî (Harbison, p.38). A useful question, no doubt, as monuments- which serve as markers of the dead, missing, or forgotten - incorporate dead architectural elements. Furthermore, monuments are not normally of experimental design, thereby relegating their elements to be of a familiar vocabulary. The Vietnam memorial, which Harbison highlights as an anti-monument unlike other memorials, requires active participation to fully experience it. It is in this participation that the true memorialization can take place, as the viewer is forced to confront the history. Harbison asserts that successful monuments require this interaction, otherwise a monument is simply a ìmonstrous exaggeration of the requirement that architecture be permanentî (Harbison, p. 37).

In the chapter on fortifications and ideal cities, Harbison challenges the historical interest that these buildings create in modern times. Historically, the fortifications were not intended to be meccas for tourists or subjects of architectural studies. It is only recently that these fortifications, some merely ruins, became curiosities. This is an issue which some historians may take for granted, but it must be considered if one is to study these fortifications in a scholarly light. Harbisonís interest is in how the symbolism of the fortificationís form has been translated into architecture in more recent times (19th and 20th centuries). In manipulating the forms, it is usually the curiosities associated with castles and fortresses which are quoted rather than their functional elements. Again, symbolism is more important than form. In the ideal city, however, symbolism is linked with form. Harbison proposes that ideal cities are doomed from the outset because life and its necessary functions exist in a real- not ideal- world. The point is well-made, offering examples of cities which, despite their calculated planning and architectural design, failed. Only at Disneyland has the calculated design been able to manipulate the mind into seeing the fantasy, rather than the order, in which it revels. The functional and symbolic cannot coexist in the reality of life. Harbisonís idea, which should be carefully considered by designers and historians alike, challenges the relative importance of form and symbol in a single design.

After presenting the example of Disneyland and its artful manipulation of the visitors' perception of the fantasy over the form, Harbison explores different ways of understanding ruins, another aspect of architecture which relies heavily on perception. Although one might think that a chapter such as this could provide insight as to why people perceive ruins as they do, Harbison takes for granted the historian's interest in ruins as a timeline, as well as their function as a dictionary of architectural forms. Rather, Harbison focuses on modern depictions of ruins, both simple and highly-technological. Although Harbisonís idea that skeletal forms of buildings convey the honesty of the materials and construction is valid, the connection between ancient ruins and how their forms are interpreted today is not too articulate. Harbison moves from discussing street patterns to factories with little explanation of how the two relate- much less, how they relate to understanding the meanings conveyed in architectural ruins.

The following chapter, which discusses spatial depiction in paintings, is also hard to understand. Although Harbison focuses the chapter on Renaissance paintings because of their attention to perspective, this is a narrow historical window. The depiction of space and architecture in paintings is a worthwhile investigation for architectural historians and designers, but the Renaissance should serve as a starting point and not an end in and of itself. Harbison presents the material as an imperative, which violates the wonder of true three-dimensional space. The parallels drawn between modernists in painting and architecture are more valid, as the creative philosophies of Modernism blurred the boundaries of the two artistic enterprises.

Harbison concludes his ìpursuit of architectural meaningî (the subtitle of the book) with a chapter exploring unbuilt and unbuildable designs. It is in this chapter that Harbison regains the clarity with which the first three chapters were written. Furthermore, Harbison articulates some ideas which challenge the reader. For example, Harbison writes ìPerhaps one cannot separate true architectural impossibility from the social will to buildî (Harbison, p. 161). This statement may express the true meaning of architecture, as a need and a desire felt by the guiding forces of society. It is in the unbuildable buildings, such as Etienne-Louis Boulleeís Royal Library and Cenotaph to Newton, Christopher Wrenís model for St. Paulís Cathedral, and Konstantin Melnikovís Palace of the Soviets, that one begins to understand the central element which gives architecture its meaning: its relationship to the human scale. In the unbuildable designs, the human scale has been forgotten. The unbuildable buildings are those to which people cannot relate and those which will never convey the true meaning of architecture: the physical representation of the human need to build. Moreover, the structural difficulties that ensue because of their size and/or design means that these buildings cannot fulfill the social need to build.

Robert Harbisonís book The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable searches for architectural meaning in a range of architectural forms. The strength of the book lies in its beginning and ending, as Harbison attempts to find universal meanings in architecture. Although the middle chapters stray from his explorations of form, symbolism, and meaning, they provide interesting points of departure for further study. The ideas presented in Harbisonís book challenge architectural historians, designers, and casual observers of architecture to reconsider why different expressions of architecture are more pleasing, lasting, or successful than others. In the end, one cannot ignore the role of the viewer-participant in bringing an individual perspective to the study of architecture.
 
 
 

Harbison, Robert.The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable. 
       (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991).