Picturesque Architecture
Year of lecture: Unknown
Abstract:
"Symmetry is certainly not an overriding rule of contemporary planning. If a symmetrical plan is chosen by an architect today, it is the result of a deliberate choice, chosen for being most suited for the circumstances, and not, as it was in the past, an accepted architectural presupposition dating back to the very beginnings of architecture itself. Today plans are far more often asymmetrical than symmetrical. And only a moment’s reflection is necessary for us to realize what a major advance in architectural planning became possible once the overriding principle of symmetry was abandoned. Once this principle of abstract balance as broken through it became possible to relate a building far more organically to its environmental setting, and to relate it more judiciously to the material requirements of living it was intended to serve, to make it we might say, more like a plant than a mathematical equation.
"It is plain therefore that this principle of irregularity is of fundamental importance in the history of architectural design. And it is most desirable that we should trace this break from symmetrical planning back to its roots."
