It may, in the first place, express or reflect the emotion of
those who designed it, or it may express the facts of its own internal
structure and arrangement. The former, however, can only, I think, be
said to be realized in the case of architecture of the highest class,
and when taken collectively as a typical style. For instance, we can all
pretty well agree that the mediaeval cathedral expresses an emotion of
aspiration on the part of its builders. The age that built the
cathedrals longed to soar in some way, and this was the way then open to
it, and it sent up its soul in spreading vaults, and in pinnacles and
spires. So also we can never look at Greek architecture without seeing
in it the reflection of a nature refined, precise, and critical; loving
grace and finish, but content to live with the graces and the muses
without any aspirations that spurned this earth. We can hardly go
further than this in attributing emotional expression to architecture.
But in a more restricted sense of the word _expression_, a building may
express very definitely its main constructive facts, its plan and
arrangement, to a certain extent even its purpose, so far at least that
we may be able to identify the class of structure to which it belongs.
It not only may, but it ought to do this, unless the architecture is to
be a mere ornamental screen for concealing the prosaic facts of the
structure.
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