"Scientific architecture!?"

[TEPaul]

The word and the phrase "scientific architecture" begins to appear in the thinking and writing of some of the best and most respected architects as far back as the early part of the 20th century.

It's a concept and an application that clearly (to me anyway) is beginning to go in the direction of formulaics in architecture. It seems to have been developed particularly in the beginning of the "Golden Age of Architecture" particularly in America. It's proponents who wrote about it (and seemed to be quite proud of it) appeared to be primarily Tillinghast and Flynn but certainly many of the others of their contemporaries as well.

Without doubt they were beginning to try to grapple with ideas and concepts of "fairness", balance, order and equilibrium in architecture and how exactly to design to take into consideration the risk/reward factors of various skill levels.

"Scientific architecture" may have been good or bad for the future and the evolution of golf architecture but one can hardly deny that it was a departure and perhaps a really vast departure from the model and mecca of original architecture--TOC.

Why did they do it? If you ask me they did it to try as best as they could to popularize the game by creating some kind of man-made scientific order and balance across the golfing spectrum--particularly in America and it may have also been another example of man's inclination to control things in golf through architecture.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Some good thoughts.  I don't think you can underestimate mankind's desire to put some order in the landscape, to start.

Secondly, it was a precursor to Golf Club Atlas!  If you are interested in golf design, then you spend time thinking about it, and how to make it better.  I don't know if the phrase "scientific" was coined to help the reader understand the ideas better, but it could be.  They were in the heart of the industrial age, and it probably seemed clear that science was solving lots of problems in other areas.

If you acknowledge the Golden Age as the best period of architecture, and admit this type thinking developed at the beginning of the Golden Age, can you not agree that scientific thinking contributed positively?  It had to be better than the "absolutely no clue, and no thought" architecture that they were seeing and reacting too.

Your negative connotation of formula comes not from their work, as they had the advantage of doing it first, but from later copies of it one way or another.  A good ideas is a good idea.  If you design a good idea once, its original.  Do it again, and it's still a good idea, but not orignial, and the copy may be bad, as Tim Liddy notes with the TPC influence on design.  Lastly, from time to time paradigms shift, and most of us look for fresh concepts rather than fresh executions of old concepts, and the cycle starts again.

Certainly, being stuck in one mold without ever changing is not good.  I hope to avoid the stererotype of an old architect giving green 53 here, a number 34 here, etc.  But if I try to move my thinking forward (in advance of the heat of construction, it isn't formula, its enlightenment, just like golden age enlightenment!

Flynn et al. may have looked at every hole with a cross bunker, regardless of hole length, wind, etc. and wondered why it was all the same (just as you wonder about some current architecture) and asked why.  The next question, of course, has to be "What would be better?"  Perhaps they thought cross bunkers were okay on short holes, etc. but lateral bunkers made sense elsewhere, etc. and most of all, were probably looking for variety, as most courses then and now were too much the same, rather than too much different/inconsistent.

I am doing the same today. I have always wondered about your call for "blank slate" thinking versus having some philosophy about what makes a golf course good before going into the actual design. "If you don't know where you are going, you can board any train" is an old Chinese proverb that I think fits here.  In reality, all architects have some kind of formula, even if it is to say there is no formula, which has always been a popular thing to say!  

I was writing ideas down (for my series on Cybergolf) I consider these ideas "snapshots" of captured thought at a specific time, but once published, someone, perhaps you, could call it or think of it as a "formula" that I always follow.  I suppose the proof is in the pudding as to whether I, or any architect, can adapt his general concepts to a site, region, or special design situation, like doing a TPC course.

Just some thoughts, but clearly, I think the "deep thoughts" those gentleman thought were beneficial to golf design then and now.

[TEPaul]

JeffB:

Good thoughts but somewhat off the direction of where I may have thought I was going with a thread like this. And I'm glad you responded first as I've always admired your dedication to a general architectural subject like this with your notebook on architectural concept (that you may keep updating) which I've also admired as an interesting architectural application on conceptual thinking.

I think in the back of my mind, though, with something like "scientific architecture", whatever those early architects thought they were doing with it, is the fundamental direction it may have ultimately taken the evolution of architecture (although clearly that may not have been what they were intending).

And I do think that fundamental direction for good or bad was in the direction of "formulaics" in architecture. Science, systems, formulae---eventually they do all blend!

Ultimately it may have led us to a whole laundry list amongst both architects and golfers about what's acceptable and what isn't in both architecture and golf. The longer that laundry list gets, in my opinion, the less benefical it may be for golf.

At the base of this entire subject is something I believe Max Behr was trying to scratch at--and I can't see that anyone else in architecture tried to delve to the depths of it the way he did.

I believe he was actually trying to analyze and compare in a general sense man's fundamental relationship (as a species) to Nature itself VS man's fundamental relationship to man (himself).

Cetainly Behr felt that man was and is an instinctually ever-controlling species but that perhaps even to him the idea of the power, majesty and indominability of Nature should not be controlled or even challenged in some things. To him, at least  in the idea of "sport" it shouldn't be--or else eventually it may ultimately become perceived as not much more than a "parlor game" (something completely of man's making!).

But he didn't appear to say such things simply because that's the way he may have felt. Apparently he truly felt that man generally would approach Nature or what he percieved to be natural much less critically and less negatively than something he percieved to be put before him (obstacles) by another man (architect).

Personally, I can't help but think there has to be some truth in what he said. But it's been 75 years since he said that and golf architecture and golf in the interim has come a long way from his sentiments and possibly led by the ongoing idea of "scientific architecture" in one form or another.

What would appear to logically happen with the extrapolation of "scientific architecture" is all things eventually tend to become defined and categorized. Frankly, that's man's way and not Nature's way.

Golf and architecture looked at strictly scientifically, the way to play becomes totally evident, I think---the middle becomes obvious, visible, formulaic, generally ideal, not requiring thought just execution and eventually the golfer is only led through a test of skill and not so much thought.

It seemed so important to Behr that the golfer should be able to think uniquely for himself about what he intended to do or how he went about his own strategy. He felt the architect should offer the golfer only what the golfer felt to be his own way--not the architect's way in the golfer's journey of sport across Nature--as nature (and it's many obstacles) has no scientific way of offering a golfer directions of how to play over it and across it.

Maybe this subject is too esoteric or even senseless, but I don't think so.

Science (or the scientific mind) and Nature are always at odds to some degree, don't you think? And if that's so I think you can see some inherent contradictions here or at the very least some dualities.

Some pooh pooh what may be some real differences between the idea of "sport" and the idea of the "game". I don't--I think there's a ton of fascinating stuff there to be looked at again. And it's probably very fundamental and who knows--maybe it could even lead to some fresh thinking in architecture and golf again.

[Jeff_Brauer]

The lack of response to your question is astounding, inasmuch as I doubt anyone here believes I would be "the last word" on any subject.  I think you are trying to figure out what the heck I was trying to say, I'm still noodling on what your thesis was, and the rest are leaving us to our own devices.  Fair enough.

Yes, I took the scientific architecture to represent the trend to placing bunkers at prescribed distances, to theories like "short shot, small green, long shot, big green" etc. rather than delve into the relationship of man to nature, as you describe.  I haven't really read Behr, so I was thinking of the books by Tillie, Ross, Thomas, and MacKenzie.

While all realize that golf is best on wildly natural sites, they were struggling conceptually at their typical tasks (again, Cypress Point and some others notwithstanding) of placing golf on mundane inland sites, away from ancestral seaside dunes sites.  Behr was right - we accept more quirk, or variance, in normal design on spectacular seaside sites than we would elsewhere. We may have forgotten what a conceptual mental struggle that was for Scottish born and bred architects.

Perhaps they thought they had to compensate - or overcompensate - for the lack of nature with intriguing man made hazards on most sites.  When they get to that point, my original post comes back into play - how do we do that?  What is best? etc.  Throw in gradually increasing construction technology, new fangled housing courses, and later, environmental regulations they couldn't conceive of (talk about classifying things, like wetlands) and the explosion of the importance of the game (or is it sport) with big prize money, and there was lot to think about!

As for Behr's physchogy of making your own choices, I agree there, too.  It's child phsyc, really - give them two options and they will pick one.  Say do this or else, and they rebel!  But, on inland sites, with less wind, drama, etc. I'm sure they felt they had to provide some order - thats what golf architects do, thats what they are!  

Yes, that is at odds with natures way, but I'm sure they were quickly realizing that golf and nature were, by necessity of popularity, going to part ways soon.  So, why not do what the english did in taming their gardens - use nature as a guide, but arrange elements with some order that meets basic needs (shading the house in the summer with trees, plants that flower at various times of the year to provide constant beauty, etc)

Of course, the accepted new ideas eventually become the norm, until someone forgets why they became normal, and rethinks them again.

This is beginning to sound like a thread for Tom MacWood!

[TEPaul]

JeffB:

That's a good post--thanks. It's a tough subject for anyone to get their mind into. You can't see it--you can't rank it--you can't count the numbers or really tell how you did.

Keep at it--and I think some things that are interesting will start to glimmer at you. You're last two paragraphs are very poignant to me--that might be the tragic reality of it all and where we are today--maybe too much time has gone by. Only if some could have listened more carefully to Behr but alas--he's always been so hard to read easily.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Just to be sure I'm straight on this, is the tragic reality that this sounds like a thread for Tom MacWood, as I suggested in my last "poignant" paragraph?

[T_MacWood]

In some of these old books and magazines I often run into the discription 'scientificly placed traps'. Not so much from architects but from writers and golfers describing the attributes of a particular course. And it was normally used in the context of catching a poor shot. I read it to meant well trapped or thoughtfully trapped...bunkers placed in strategic locations to punish the poor shot (demanding consideration/thought). Almost synonimous with strategic, but not quite...strategic leaning a bit toward the penal.

[TEPaul]

"I read it to meant well trapped or thoughtfully trapped...bunkers placed in strategic locations to punish the poor shot (demanding consideration/thought). Almost synonimous with strategic, but not quite...strategic leaning a bit toward the penal."

Tom MacW:

Close but I don't think that's exactly the idea of it. I'll try to reprint how the term was used by a good Boston sports writer about the Flynn/Wilson/Merion influence on Kittansett. Strategic was certainly part of the context, I think, but with the idea of including something for everyone--much of it probably was getting to hazard placement distance-wise to create strategies for various levels of golfers at various points. It was certainly becoming removed from any sort of randomness, let's say!

[TEPaul]

Oh well, forgetaboutit. It's probably a better idea to discuss rating and rankings.

[Paul_Turner]

Tom

James Braid was an advocate of the scientific approach, he wrote some high profile articles on the subject in Golf Illustrated.  I can't remember the dates, but it was quite early, and he had very clear ideas about the exact breakdown of hole lengths a course should have.  JH Taylor was another architect who probably embraced the scientific approach.  Architects like Colt and Mackenzie were explicit in their dislike of this kind of constraint.

[TEPaul]

"Architects like Colt and Mackenzie were explicit in their dislike of this kind of constraint."

Paul:

I'm extremely interested to hear that. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I'd like to see any evidence you have about what they may have said about it or even the idea of it. They're two that I can't really see dabbling with the concept.

[Paul_Turner]

Tom

Here's an excerpt from an article by Colt in 1912:

"In conclusion, I can say that I have made no attempt to prescribe for the size of greens or tees, for the width or length of the various holes, for the depth or shapes of bunkers, as it is my firm conviction that the less said on these subjects the better.  I have met with so many "thirty by thirties" in putting greens, "ten by tens" in tees and so much similarity in bunkers, that I am sick to death of them.  Immediately we attempt to standardise sizes, shapes and distances we lose more than half the pleasure of the game.  Too much stress cannot be laid upon the necessity of seeing and using the natural features present on each course to the fullest possible extent."

Pretty explicit!

[GeoffreyC]

Tom

you write :    Science (or the scientific mind) and Nature are always at odds to some degree, don't you think? And if that's so I think you can see some inherent contradictions here or at the very least some dualities"

That's an incredibly interesting thought and you have really hit the nail on the head at least in regard to its application to golf course architecture which after all has an inherent artistic component that "hard science" does not need to deal with.

As a scientist I would argue that in fact my craft is inherently trying to understand the laws of nature and in doing so put them into formulas that apply to anyone and anywhere.  While the apparent randomness of nature with respect to the land and sea as we find it before building a golf course seems evident, the laws of physics, chemisty and biology still apply.  Scientists try to put formulas to this behavior.  Clearly, formulas however complicated they may be must be applicable but here perhaps is the dual nature of the problem whith respect to golf course architecture you refer to.  Golf course architects can't be to formuleic because the laws of nature have given us far too many possibilities within the vast landscape and the artistic component can't be accounted for in a scientific manner.  A golf course after all is inherently manmade and an artform.  It is viewed as a playing field within the surrounding context of nature.  We don't have enought formulas to account for this just yet.

[Tom_Doak]

While the term was "scientific" it seems that a lot of what was described is "mathematical," at least in terms of balance and fairness.

"Mathematical" quickly translates into "formulaic."

There is a lot of science involved with good golf architecture, particularly in understanding how things drain so you can work with the land instead of fighting it.  It's the mathematical part that bugs me.

[TEPaul]

GeoffreyC;

If you really think that paragraph or two is interesting I would just implore you to really read Max Behr's articles. It's all right there--all I'm doing is sort of recapitulating it in various ways.

I would implore all of you who have any interest at all in this type of subject and how it applies to golf and architecture to read Max Behr. I admit his writing style is incredibly labyrinthian and perhaps bizarre but if you take it slow and go over it a few times you won't be disappointed at all.

Actually, far from disappointed I almost guarantee that you'll have your mind opened to things that never occured to you about architecture---really really fundamental things. He doesn't exactly attempt to tell anyone how to play a golf hole or make a bunker or anything of that nature. He asks a series of truly fundamental questions about architecture and then goes about a priori attempting to prove some fundamental thoughts and truths.

TomD:

Good post. You're so right--ie science=mathematics=forumlae=standardization=rules and conventions--practically the opposite of nature's inherent randomness and almost complete lack of any kind of formalized golf construct!

I guess this is a bit of a way on my part to look at some of the Golden Agers in a more objective light. I don't really go for the "scientific approach" at all or certainly where it may have led after the Golden Age.

Maybe it was just a logical way of some of those early architects to try to satisfy everyone with their architecture--or at least make it seem more understandable and equitable to all those coming into the game for the first time. We can't forget they were not only trying to create some good stuff but they were trying to popularize the game too and keep the business of golf booming.

[GeoffreyC]

Tom Paul

Yu write   --- "You're so right--ie science=mathematics=forumlae=standardization=rules and conventions--practically the opposite of nature's inherent randomness and almost complete lack of any kind of formalized golf construct!"

That's not totally true as I mentioned in my post above.  Nature while seemingly random must by definition follow the laws of physics, chemistry and biology.  We just can't predict how those seemingly random features evolve over long time periods from complex mixtures of weather, plant growth and other factors. The science of drainage and construction is a piece of cake compared to prediction of the formation of land forms.

I will be looking at more of Behr's writing.  Thanks for the heads up.

[Mike_Cirba]

There is a fairly well-known architect who operates thusly;

He believes that architecture should "test every club in the bag", so he essentially takes the average driving distance of top players and builds a championship tee for them.  He then "scientifically" distances each of his holes so that approach shots vary about 15 yards per hole, and then situates his regular and women's tees in the same manner, with the idea that the difference in distance between each group nets the same effect.

That type of formulaic approach would seem to work best on "blank slate" terrains, so it's probably no wonder that the architect in question works primarily in dead-flat Florida.  Even there, however, it would seem that he is trying to apply strict standards to variable questions, so I would think the actual playing results might be somewhat less "scientific" than the architect expects.

[Steve_L.]

Interesting about the Florida GCArchitect who has a formula for every club in the bag...

Hope the wind blows like hell at his next grand opening - Mother Nature has something to say about the validity of formulaic design...

[TEPaul]

GeoffreyC, you said;

"Nature while seemingly random must by definition follow the laws of physics, chemistry and biology.  We just can't predict how those seemingly random features evolve over long time periods from complex mixtures of weather, plant growth and other factors."

Geoffrey;

That's really the whole point here. I'm certainly not saying (and either was Behr) that Nature, albeit apparently random, does not conform in many ways to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, all of which can be or have been mathematized in many ways.

The point is that nature with all its makeup, all it’s random formations influenced by all the forces of it and upon it has never really arranged itself in a way that conforms to the standardizations, the formulae, the mathematics, the rules and conventions with which man has arranged golf architecture—and further as man has come to believe that golf architecture needs to be arranged. The things that man makes for golf architecture, many of which can be mathematized, formulated, standardized can look like man made them, and not nature (at least  Behr was concerned about those things that the golfer perceived to be man-made).

Those differences and those distinction are just so important to both make and understand—certainly Max Behr thought so. Why? Simply because he felt man (the golfer) would face the challenges he perceived to be Nature’s challenges (unaltered by man) so much less critically and so much less negatively than he would those challenges put before him by another man (architect/golfer). And why did Behr say even that? He said it because he felt there was a real distinction between Man’s inherent relationship with Nature itself compared to Man’s inherent relationship with his fellow man (another man/golfer/architect). Behr mentioned the “club-stroke” and how that could create a certain level of emotional anxiety or stress in a golfer. He said that due to that emotional stress the golfer would more likely face and deal with the obstacles before him less negatively and less critically if he thought or perceived they were the obstacles of Nature and not the obstacles conceived and constructed by another man to test him (and criticize him—to point out and highlight his faults!). Why would Behr assume or propose that man would be less critical of Nature’s obstacles compared to man-made obstacles? Simply because he thought that man inherently felt that Nature’s ways and arrangements, and even its random obstacles to golf were more majestic in their random constructs, more powerful and worthy of respect (probably due to the indominability of Nature in the over-all to the controlling ways of Man) than some obstacle conceived of and constructed by another man (architect/golfer).

If one does not understand or buy into those arguments then one is probably not going to buy into the things that Max Behr wrote about regarding golf architecture and its need to be perceived by the golfer as natural—to the largest extent possible. Max Behr was not exactly a dreamer as some such as Rich Goodale keep implying he was. He understood and admitted that there were certain things about golf architecture that were necessarily going to be man-made looking. Why? Simply because they were necessary for golf to be played and were virtually impossible to make look natural for various commonsense reasons. Those he included that almost had to be perceived as man-made included tees, fairways, greens and to some extent bunkering (because neither it nor sand were always natural to certain sites!). Those features he simply said the architect should only try to make appear as natural as possible. All of this, like a number of other architects, Behr called “hiding the hand of man (the architect)”.

(This is getting long—continued in the next post)

[ForkaB]

Tom

While you're taking a breath.....

Isn't man an integral and inseparable part of "nature?"

rich

[TEPaul]

(continued from post #18 ),

Although Behr may have only alluded to “science” in architecture or “scientific architecture” it’s a subject that a great deal of his writing on golf architecture likely alludes to simply because he felt the controlling instinct of man to standardize everything including golf and architecture was beginning to trespass too far into that necessary balance in golf and architecture that should be reserved or preserved for Nature (or the look of it). Again, the reasons he believed that natural balance should be preserved in architecture and golf are all the reasons cited in post #18. To preserve that natural balance was to him to offer any golfer a greater feeling of freedom of expression simply because he was more inclined to deal with the random arrangements of the obstacles of Nature less critically and less negatively than those obstacles put before him by Man—which looked to be conceived and constructed by man (architect). In this way his strategies would be perceived by him to be more his own and less those that some architect was trying to make him to conform to in an attempt to test his skill—or probably more accurately to expose his faults!

Behr didn’t resist competition in golf. My God, the man was an excellent competitive golfer—finishing as a finalist twice in the US Amateur and sort of playing the Alydar to Jerome Travers’s Affirmed too many times in his career. But he obviously felt that the dual competitions of golf---man instinctively competing against nature compared to man competing against man needed to be kept separate and distinct from each other in some ways to preserve Nature’s necessary side of the balance in golf and architecture.

Behr obviously felt, as did many of those “naturalist” architects of that era that man (the architect) was probably never able to create something half as natural looking as what Nature itself could do. So his point was to not try and to use everything possible that was natural---and what was natural but needed to be enhanced for golf---to keep that looking as natural as possible too.

So now you can see that many of the things Behr was writing about were not for the reasons of a golfer simply enjoying some beautiful aesthetic (even Nature’s) while playing golf  but it was more fundamental than that---ie the interesting differences in Man’s inherent relationship to Nature compared to Man’s inherent relationship to man (and for all those foregoing reasons in post #18 ).

Behr believed this so much that he wrote a very interesting analogy of the golf architect to the painter where he focused on the “mediums” used by each and how those “mediums” should be treated by the artist architect compared to the artist painter. Here it is;

“The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master (not the architect—my words). Therefore, in the prosecution of his designs, if the architect correctly uses the forces of nature to express them and he succeeds in hiding his hand, then, only, has he created the illusion that can still all criticism.”

Do you see the interesting distinctions between the painting artist as the master of his medium compared to the artist architect NOT trying to be the total master of his medium? This basic theme and all the reasons he gave for it (those above) filters throughout almost all the articles Behr wrote on a number of aspects on golf and on architecture.

[TEPaul]

Rich asked:

"Isn't man an integral and inseparable part of "nature?""

Jesus, Rich, you may be beginning to scratch the surface of Max Behr.

Yes, I suppose he is--Behr obviously believed he was or at least that there was likely something within man that made him feel or perceive somehow that he might be.

Hence the reason he thought it might be a good idea for man to remember to appreciate that fact and not try so hard to control and dominate Nature, which, if your question is a yes would be dominating man himself, his freedom and freedom of expression, in things such as feeling he alone was the master of his strategies in golf and not the pawn of some other man (the architect).

You asked;

"Isn't man an integral and inseparable part of "nature?""

Next you'll probabaly be asking;

"Isn't man an integral and inseparable part of every other man (including every golf architect in the world).

I think even you know enough about most golfers' feeling about golf, golf architecture and golf architects (and many other men) to understand that probably isn't very true--not yet anyway.

But if you think it may be some day why don't you listen to John Lennon's "Imagine" a few thousand times and get back to me in a few years?

Or conversely, listen more to Pat Mucci, as clearly he's trying hard to make his own totally "game playing mnd" and that type of thinking of his inseparable from what every other golfer OUGHT to think. As for how poorly Pat is doing in that mission it may not be necessary to look beyond this website or even me!

[GeoffreyC]

Tom PAul

Thanks for that cogent analysis of Behr's views on nature and golf.  I will certainly have to read more of his thoughts.

[ForkaB]

"Max Behr............understood and admitted that there were certain things about golf architecture that were necessarily going to be man-made looking. Why? Simply because they were necessary for golf to be played and were virtually impossible to make look natural for various commonsense reasons. Those he included that almost had to be perceived as man-made included tees, fairways, greens and to some extent bunkering."

Tom, what else is left for "nature" to design?  Waterfalls?

[Patrick_Mucci_Jr]

TEPaul,

Did you know that Max Behr was Bi-Polar ?