There is a new spirit: it is a spirit of construction and of synthesis guided by a clear conception.
Whatever may be thought of it, it animates to-day the greater part of human activity.
A GREAT EPOCH HAS BEGUN
Programme of l'Esprit Nouveau.
No, 1. October, 1920.
THERE is one profession and one only, namely architecture, in which progress is not considered necessary, where laziness is enthroned, and in which the reference is always to yesterday.
Everywhere else, taking thought for the morrow is almost a fever and brings its inevitable solution: if a man does not move forward he becomes bankrupt.
But in architecture no one ever becomes bankrupt. A privileged profession, alas! *** The airplane is indubitably one of the products of the most intense selection in the range of modern industry.
The War was an insatiable "client," never satisfied, always demanding better. The orders were to succeed at all costs and death followed a mistake remorselessly. We may then affirm that the airplane mobilized invention, intelligence and daring: imagination and cold reason. It is the same spirit that built the Parthenon.
Let us look at things from the point of view of
