- Mendelsohn considered architecture from a unified perspective of plan, section, and elevation as three main graphic devices. He sees the structural system of the “new era” is based upon “elastic continuity,” whereas the ancient systems of post and beam and the medieval system of buttress and vault were “gravity structures” – unelastic and intermittent constructions. The static principle of antiquity was invented by man, but the elastic principle was dictated by Nature. He, therefore, suggested that we should follow the organic principle that is analogous to the way nature works. (the elastic stability of structural member works in the same way as our body and limbs) He also indicates two groups of architects: functionalist, who were dependent on use, materials, and construction – “the primary elements of architecture by which it fulfills its purpose” and dynamics, who express tension innate to elastic building materials, of kinetic movement and counter-movement within the immovable, static stability of the building.“Through that the writer’s credo that ‘the architect cannot think in single dimensions, the artist not in multiplicities, the creator but in the unity of all experiences,’ reaches a new dimension-the dimension of a new world which is before us and whose sacred symbols the imagination of our and future generations will have to create. For it carries the seed of a new religious conception.”
LIYANG DING 