Today I encountered the most wonderful stairs.
We are on a “Wagner crawl” (think pub crawl, only Otto Wagner). His work is amazing. Wagner raises questions of taking archetypes much like a glass bottle in your hand and smashing them against a Corinthian column. That’s the effect he produced when his work went up during the Secession. How can you do something different? Better? Will people accept it and praise it? No. When Wagner’s buildings were erected, people would howl and jeer. William Blake once wrote, “What is great is necessarily obscure to ordinary men.”
The mastery of subtlety, the attention to detail, the celebration of things coming together, the confluence with Mackintosh and Klimt, and even a touch of Brunelleschi, is breathtaking. And this is just a subway station.
We visit one of Wagner’s children, a building adjacent to the Naschmarkt. We stake out the entrance, waiting for a tenant to open the door for us. We are patient. Then, a lady keys in, and Tate grabs the door. We rush it.
Wagner is generous with his entrances and landings. The way he treats space is wonderful. Me and Jonathan are the first to reach the stairs. It is unlike any set of stairs I have ever climbed.
I glide effortlessly. I coast. I do not stomp, clod or tramp up these stairs. There is a handrail, but it invites me to use the steps. I am obliged. Up and down, up and down I go. I want to remember this sensation. I sketch, I shoot, but I cannot capture the feeling of moving on these stairs. It must be experienced.
People ascend and descend around us as we draw and take pictures and measurements. I could tell the difference between someone in my program walking the steps, slowly, deliberately, lovingly, and those unfortunate souls who were either oblivious or had simply become accustomed to this architectural phenomenon. But isn’t that the point of good design? To make things better? To get in and out as subversively, yet as effectively, as possible?
Perhaps the appreciation of a great staircase, or any good design, is reserved for those who choose to be conscious of them.
We are on a “Wagner crawl” (think pub crawl, only Otto Wagner). His work is amazing. Wagner raises questions of taking archetypes much like a glass bottle in your hand and smashing them against a Corinthian column. That’s the effect he produced when his work went up during the Secession. How can you do something different? Better? Will people accept it and praise it? No. When Wagner’s buildings were erected, people would howl and jeer. William Blake once wrote, “What is great is necessarily obscure to ordinary men.”
The mastery of subtlety, the attention to detail, the celebration of things coming together, the confluence with Mackintosh and Klimt, and even a touch of Brunelleschi, is breathtaking. And this is just a subway station.
We visit one of Wagner’s children, a building adjacent to the Naschmarkt. We stake out the entrance, waiting for a tenant to open the door for us. We are patient. Then, a lady keys in, and Tate grabs the door. We rush it.
Wagner is generous with his entrances and landings. The way he treats space is wonderful. Me and Jonathan are the first to reach the stairs. It is unlike any set of stairs I have ever climbed.
I glide effortlessly. I coast. I do not stomp, clod or tramp up these stairs. There is a handrail, but it invites me to use the steps. I am obliged. Up and down, up and down I go. I want to remember this sensation. I sketch, I shoot, but I cannot capture the feeling of moving on these stairs. It must be experienced.
People ascend and descend around us as we draw and take pictures and measurements. I could tell the difference between someone in my program walking the steps, slowly, deliberately, lovingly, and those unfortunate souls who were either oblivious or had simply become accustomed to this architectural phenomenon. But isn’t that the point of good design? To make things better? To get in and out as subversively, yet as effectively, as possible?
Perhaps the appreciation of a great staircase, or any good design, is reserved for those who choose to be conscious of them.
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