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PARTISAN REVIEW
formation adopted, adapted or invented in tools and building of man?
He found ready made levels of mountain banks leading upward
like steps. Roads winding their way in serpentines to mountain tops. The
trunk of a tree with its branches growing in rhythmic ascent used as a
ladder to gather fruit. Perhaps this was the first inspiration to winders
radiating from a center newel. The spiral-stair, an attempt to circle the
square in space. Transformation of the cube (in buildings) into a
sphere.
Sphering the cube.
Mutation of an upright ladder, changed
hy
leaning and rota tion, into
a
step-cylinder, resulting in the spiral–
stair. Some of the most beautiful spiral stairs in the palace of the
Count of Dunois with its wide out-reaching branches of steps, surreal to
actual necessity. Progression from abstraction to realism clearly visible
in Greek colonnades: Doric capital wholly geometrical, later changed
to a paired-spiral volute in the Ionic order, and finally, in the Coryn–
thian column to an acanthus leaf bending its head involutingly, betray–
ing the secret of inspiration (Nature) to the invention of Architectural
Order (Observation spiral-tower [17th Century] used by Peter the Great
to ride up [Copenhagen].)
Examples of spiral crystallizations in architectural design:
Model of Tatlin's monument, planned 1920, to commemorate the
Russian Revolution. A hollow twin-spiral, free-standing steel-frame,
pointing up its pole, bearing inside the Administration Building. It was
the sculptor gone architect and the architect gone constructivist. A
superb attempt at Architecture per se.
My own Space-Theater project (1923) with its central space–
stage actually built at the Vienna City Festival 1924. Two wide ascend–
ing spiral-ramps leading to a circular platform, the nucleus of action.
The ramps (used by actors or locomotive units) had a long straight
start in the lituus manner. Floor and top level also connected by an
open elevator running through the center. Top level connected by bridge
with surrounding balcony level, which made for a three-point support
of an otherwise free-standing structure, accenting the floating effect of
the ramps.
In the "Endless" a whole spheroid building for theatrical, cinema
and sport activities ( 1924). The Space-theater idea of ramps was ex–
tended to form all floors of the vast structure up to its very heights in
intertwining ramps.l<· A building wholly composed of ramps, accessible
on all levels by foot and cars. The inside of the paraboloid shell of the
"Endless" was smoothed for projection (see "Catalogue for Vienna
Festival, 1924")
.**
*
See for plan and section "Architectural Record," 1930.
**
For further Projection-Schemes covering sides and ceiling of Auditorium,
see Film Guild Cinema of New York and its description in "Motion Pictures
Herald," 1929, and
Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display,
Brentano's, 1930.
