However much we may prefer to discuss architecture in terms of visual styles, its most far-reaching practical effects are not at the level of appearances at all, but at the level of space. By giving shape and form to our material world, architecture structures the system of space in which we live and move. In that it does so, it has a direct relation – rather than a merely symbolic one – to social life, since it provides the material preconditions for the patterns of movement, encounter and avoidance which are the material realisation – as well as sometimes the generator – of social relations. In this sense, architecture pervades our everyday experience far more than a preoccupation with its visual properties would suggest.

But however pervasive of everyday experience, the relation between space and social life is certainly very poorly understood. In fact for a long time it has been both a puzzle and a source of controversy in the social sciences. It seems as naive to believe that spatial organisation through architectural form can have a determinative effect on social relations as to believe that any such relation is entirely absent. Recent reviews of sociological research in the area (Michelson, 1976) do not really resolve the matter. Some limited influences from such generalised spatial factors as density to social relations are conceded, subject to strong interaction with such sociological variables as family (p. 92), homogeneity (p. 192) and lifestyle (p. 94). But little is said about the ways in which strategic architectural decisions about built form and spatial organisation may have social consequences.

SUMMARY

Insides and outsides: the reversal effect

A settlement, as we have seen, is at least an assemblage of primary cells, such that the exterior relations of those cells, by virtue of their spatial arrangement, generate and modulate a system of encounters. But this only accounts for a proportion of the total spatial order in the system, namely the proportion that lies between the boundary of the primary cell and the global structure of the settlement. No reference has yet been made to the internal structure of the primary cells, nor to how such structures would relate to the rest of the system. This section concerns the internal structures of cells: it introduces a method of syntactic analysis of interior structures, which we will call gamma-analysis; it develops a number of hypotheses about the relation between the principal syntactic parameters and social variables; and it offers a theory of the relations between the internal and external relations of the cell as part of a general theory of the social logic of space.

SUMMARY

From structures to particular realities

In Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 the aim has been to show that, in spite of its variety, human spatial organisation has, however imperfect, a certain internal logic. This internal logic accounts, we believe, for the knowability of space. Because it has the property of knowability, space can operate as a morphic language, that is, as one of the means by which society is constituted and understood by its members. By embodying intelligibility in spatial forms, the individuals in a society create an experiential reality through which they can retrieve a description of certain dimensions of their society and the ways in which they are members of it. These descriptions are essentially abstract in nature, although they are drawn from a concrete reality. Descriptions are summaries of the principles of a spatial pattern, not simply an enumeration of its parts.

Cambridge can show to a remarkable extent the continuity of the architecture of England from later Saxon times to the present day. We could never expect the buildings of a single town to be quite comprehensive, but possibly no other English centre is so completely equipped: Oxford, which is more representative in some respects, notably for Norman work, has no outstanding example of either Saxon or Early Gothic; and Cambridge is also more representative because Oxford has stone buildings only; but brick was an important building material in England from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards, and in some centres—Cambridge being one of them—it was in use from the later part of the fifteenth century. The very limitations of its constructive and decorative possibilities gave the brick building a value of its own.

STYLES IN ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE

There is no more common form of question put to the historian of architecture than ‘How are we to know that a building belongs to a particular style or period?’ We must begin with construction, as in any consideration of architectural styles we cannot ignore the limitations of particular materials; and what we call a ‘style’ was something which was made by a gradual process, controlled, more or less strictly, by local methods of handling materials. The vertical projecting strips, for example, that we often find in Saxon towers, may have had a remote origin far removed from England, but the constructive method of building these strips in Saxon walls is peculiarly native; and we could find similar explanations for many distinctive forms in other countries.

This book may enable the architecturally-minded visitor to Cambridge—who has more leisure than can be afforded in a brief inspection—to realise the value of the Town and University for illustrating the sequence of styles in English architecture; for which purpose, the series of thirty-one Plates and Descriptions of subjects from Cambridge has been augmented by an Introduction dealing with England as a whole. In this, again, subjects from Cambridge have been used for the most part, though no excuse should be required for the frequent reference to Ely Cathedral; and only by its inclusion with Cambridge can Gothic architecture, as a whole, be adequately explained.

The examples have been selected as typical of the more important aspects of architectural style, without consideration of the inclusion of all the Colleges; the only explanation that need be offered for the omission of Magdalene and Sidney Sussex. A more solid objection might be maintained to the omission of one of the timber-framed domestic buildings in the Town; but these buildings show rather a phase of construction than of style, belonging to a type which was widely prevalent and unvarying in essentials.

There have been so many books on Cambridge that I may, perhaps, be excused for not mentioning any of them except Willis and Clark's great work, and the late J. W. Clark's A Concise Guide to the Town and University of Cambridge, now in its eleventh edition; to these, and to the former in particular, I have been much indebted.