ダニエル・ハドソン・バーナムについて (上)

抄録

Burnham is a problematic architect in the modern architectural history. In many studies, he has been criticised as a betrayer of the so-called Chicago School of architecture mainly because of his contribution to the Columbia World Fair of 1893 and his works after the Fair. Yet these works seem to have been the result of his cool judgement. The situation was changing at about 1890 on. Here, at first we discuss the complex mentality of the "progressive" clients, taking Brooks Brothers as an example. Then, we briefly survey the change of the American department store design, which was Burnham's favorite genre in his later days, from the warehouse type represented by John Wanamaker's Philadelphia store (1876) to Marshal Field's stores designed by Burnham before and after 1900. It became showy more and more as shopping became a well developed social event. This change was not confined to the department store only. Carl Condit points out that Brooks beared conflicting ambitions between having a first-class building and having the least expensive one. He also expalins this as the fundamental dilemma of all modern commercial architecture. But this dilemma was, and probably is, practically soluble as the problem of payable or not. Indeed, in his later life, Burnham produced for big businesses numerous gorgeous buildings far different, in appearence, from the "Chicago School" style. Yet, as for Burnham, he only designed payable ones in another social condition in which clients demanded elegant environment as the leisure class became prosperous.