Art

At the opening of the exhibition "English Art and the Mediterranean," Sir Kenneth Clark praised the event and its organizers. The date was December 2, 1941, and Clark was keenly aware of the interactions between scholarship and historical circumstance. Not only was the exhibit a demonstration of how "human studies can be kept alive under the most difficult circumstances" -his reference was to the threat to libraries and the personal safety of scholars in Hitler's Germany -but it also brought the "monastic" learning of the Warburg Institute to a wider audience. 1 The exhibition was a photographic survey of the classical origins of English art, organized by Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower, and held at the Warburg Institute's temporary home in South Kensington. It was the second of four major photographic exhibitions organized by the Warburg in London between 1939 and 1943, and was understood as a collaborative project of scholars working toward a common goal. 2 Saxl was responsible for the exhibition up

and the reasons why individuals turned to religious community as a means of shaping their lives. After a brief exploration of the early modern origins of the conversion narrative, Hindmarsh offers a useful exploration of the transatlantic evangelical revival in the 1730s, with an emphasis on 'how plastic religious identity had become by the mid-eighteenth century.' This chapter also argues for the social dimensions of conversion 'to stimulate parallel experience and allow the formation of a narrative community.'

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In the New York Times Magazine, the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor criticised modern architects (especially American architects) for having lost contact with what he called 'the real business of building', that is, with the understanding of how things are made. 'It's all talk these days', according to Zumthor. 'We should force universities to train carpenters and woodworkers and leather workers. Architects all want to be philosophers or artists now.' 1 Zumthor's own training as a cabinetmaker justifies such a claim, as does his architecture that celebrates the sensual qualities of material. In the Bruder Klaus Chapel (in Mechernich, Germany, 2007), for example, the concrete structure was poured over a tepee-shaped frame of logs (Plate 9). After the concrete was set, the logs were then burned out, smoke escaping through an oculus at the top of the building. The shape of the logs and the marks of the burning remain in the building as a powerful reminder of the materials used and sacrificed in the construction process. Zumthor's statement on architectural training reveals an anxiety with the current building situation, a distrust of architectural theorising in favour of architectural making that has resonance for those of us interested in an earlier period. This anxiety is also an acknowledgment of the shifting tides, and a fear that a certain kind of knowledge of making is under threat of being lost. For Zumthor, the ability to make things is fundamental to the skill of the architect, and the way for architects to understand how buildings are made is through a training in the crafts that engage and develop the knowledge that can only be gained through the labour of architecture. For him, the craft of building is intimately tied to an understanding of materials on both a technical and spiritual level. Wooden floors like light membranes, heavy stone masses, soft textiles, polished granite, pliable leather, raw steel, polished mahogany, crystalline glass, soft asphalt warmed by the sun … the architect's materials. Our materials. We know them all. And yet we do not know them. In order to design, to invent architecture, we must learn to handle them with awareness. … All design work starts from the premise of the physical, objective sensuousness of architecture, of its materials. 2

As soon as we move, our built environment changes and transforms. Yet despite its place at the heart of architectural practice, we rarely stop to think how and why we walk 'Is it not truly extraordinary to realize that ever since [humans] have walked, no one has ever asked why they walk, how they walk, whether they walk, whether they might walk better, what they achieve by walking, whether they might not have the means to regulate, change, or analyze their walk: questions that bear on all the systems of philosophy, psychology, and politics with which the world is preoccupied?'-Honoré de Balzac 1 We normally think of buildings as permanent, stable and immobile, but in fact movement is at the very heart of architecture and practice. Try, for a minute, to imagine architecture without walking. Almost every building, even those designed in the age of the railway or the automobile, has a passage that is intended to be experienced on foot. We walk to and through, in and around, buildings. We experience architecture at this one-two, left-right rhythm. But what does this extraordinary activity of walking upright, this falling and catching and falling again, this forward propulsion, bring to the study of architecture? As soon as we begin to move, the built environment begins to change and transform. A building's contours immediately shift, adjust and recompose into new forms as we approach from a distance. When the building is at arm's length we may be no longer able to perceive its overall shape, but we can acquire new information in recompense: details of surface texture that were invisible before, a range of architectural stimuli registered not just by the eyes, but by the fingertips, ears and nose, or underfoot. Walking ensures a slowness of pace that allows for contemplation of the details of architecture. We regulate our pace in order to look closely. What does the extraordinary activity of walking upright bring to the study of archi...