"
That is a very good expression of what is required in planning a
complicated building, but few outsiders have any notion of the amount of
thought and contrivance which goes to the production of a plan "with
backbone;" a plan in which all the subordinate and merely practical
departments shall be in the most convenient position in regard to each
other, and yet shall all appear as if symmetrically and naturally
subordinate to the central and leading feature; and if the public had a
little more idea what is the difficulty of producing such a plan, they
would perhaps do a little more justice to the labors of the man who
contrives the plan, which they think such an easy business; and no doubt
it may appear an easy business, because the very characteristic of a
really good plan is that it should appear as if it were quite a natural
and almost inevitable arrangement.
Just as it is said in regard to literature that easy writing is hard
reading, so, in regard to planning, it is the complicated and rabbit
warren plans that are the easiest to make, because it is just doing what
you please; it is the apparently perfectly simple and natural plan which
springs from thought and contrivance. Then there is the next step of
raising the walls on the plan, and giving them architectural expression.
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