a critical influence over all stages of production; the ar chitect's
r esponsibility is intimately tied to a detailed understanding of how
buildings work over time, not merely at t heir moment of inception.
Rat her than the plan, Kahn describes the importan ce of the 'routine
diagram' that spatialises production processes, moving methodically
through stages of ar chitectural production from start to finish, with
two exceptions: a chapter on worker welfare preceded by another on
architectural treatment. Throughout, the architect is conceived not
only as an agent of the client, but also as the r epresentative of those
who will occupy the plant over time, whether people or machines.
The mechanised approach to architectural design that Design
and Const1·uction lays out embeds creativity in a sequence
of' administrative and organisational procedures strictly controlled
by money cost. Kahn indicates t he range of' skills an architect must
1naster. Not merely laying out a building on a site, the architect
of' early concrete-frame buildings had to accommodate a complex
and variable production sequence in a r egular structural system
of' r einforced-concrete bays. As r egular a t hey are, such buildings
have a multi-scalar dimension as well. Machin e operat ions wer e
calculated by square feet of space that th ey and t heir human
operator s required; metal fLxtures for maximal flexibility embedded
in concrete beams and columns made it possible to accommodate
both, and to change the line \vhen production demanded. The site
plan, by contrast, connects to regional or national infi·astructure
in the form of' truck, train and boat lines. The ar chitect b ecame,
in this scenario, the inventor and constructor of' multi-scalar systems
rather than buildings.
Attention to :Mujica's Histo1·y of the Skysc1·ape1· of^1929 has focused
on the book's advocacy for Pan American skyscraper styling as
an apt style for a building type invented in .r orth America, based
on antecedents from ancient ~Iesoamerica. The book appears to have
had limited influence when it appeared, in part becau e of its small
print run (a circulation of only^150 copies prior to a 1977 Da Capo
facsimile). Reluctance to embrace a nativist history of architecture as
th e 1930s and '40s wore on and the toxic nativism of fa ci t regimes
worldwide b ecame more apparent, also may have played a role.
Regardless, the interest of the book today lies le in it theories
of stylistic expr ession than in its exploration of' a building type for
which aesthetic address is highly circumscribed. Indeed, more than
many others, the requirements of high-rise buildings control much
of what follows in the design process. Lil{e factories, these ar e
buildings that house many occupants and whose importance r esides,
not in form, but in a host of other architectural charact eristics.
Mujica's book includes a catalogue of high-rise buildings organised
chronologically, from the Home Insur ance Building of^1884 to One
Wall Street, still under construction as the book went to press in
192 9. In it, th e author quant ifies buildings quite literally - how many
tons of steel, how much concrete, how many yards of marble, how
many acres of rentable floor space. J ohn Sloan's foreword sums
up the project nicely: 'The younger school of American artists is now
conscious, whether as a result of t he war or because of t he count ry's
gradual economic growth, or bot h, of' the fact t hat an American art
must p erforce expr ess those phases of' American life that have b een
expressed more fluently through economic processes'. Mujica sought
an American idiom; it was, at base, an econ omic one.
All of this leaves aside trickier questions that emerge when money
cost becomes part of architectural historical analysis. The difficulty
of cOinputing currency fluctuation and changing exchange rates over
time has b een eliminated by digital tools. Yet the intricacies of cost
accounting make it easy to come up with variable numbers for
building cost. As it becomes part of architectural historical analysis,
common metrics will be needed. More importantly, cost provides
a lever to open the black box of architectural authority, to subject
it to critique that requires art iculate defence. This does not mean
cost becomes determinative of building value; rather, t he lever
open s a portal connecting Sloan and Alberti - architecture, imperial
economic for ce, take note of class and deliver on your promise.
··-••••
(Top) Albert Kahn (left)
signing contract with Saul
G Iron (right), President
of Amtorg, Detroit,
9 January 1930.
Standing centre behind
them is Moritz Kahn
(Above) Albert Kahn's
personal cost ledger
spanning the years^1907
to 1919.1t details a cost
analysis of the Lima
Locomotive Works in Ohio.
He spatialised cost by
calculating it by the cubic
foot, as opposed to the
square footen U.l
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