What is worth more, a kilo of stone or a kilo of gold? The question is probably ludicrous. But only for the businessman. The great artist will answer: for me all materials are equally valuable.

The Venus de Milo would be equally valuable whether it was made of gravel stone – in Paros the streets are gravelled with Parian marble – or of gold. The Sistine Madonna would not be worth a penny more if Raphael had mixed a few pounds of gold in with his paints. The businessman who has to think about melting down the gold Venus in an emergency, or scraping down the Madonna, will probably have to do a different sum.

But the artist has only one ambition: to master the material in a way that makes his work independent of the value of the raw material. But our architects don’t know this ambition. For them, a square metre of granite façade is more valuable than if it were concrete.

And yet granite is essentially worthless. You can find it lying outside in the field. Anyone can go and get it. Or it forms whole mountains, whole mountain ranges, which just need to be dug up. Streets are gravelled with it, towns cobbled with it. It is the most common stone, the most ordinary material known to us. And yet there are supposed to be people who consider it to be our most valuable building material?

These people say material and mean work. Human labour power, skill and art. Because granite demands a lot of work to wrest it from the mountain, a lot of work to bring it to its destination, work to give it the right shape, work to give it a pleasing appearance. And at the sight of the polished granite wall our heart will lift in respectful terror. At the material? No, at the human labour.

So does this mean that granite is indeed more valuable than concrete? Not necessarily. For a wall with stucco decoration by the hand of Michelangelo will put even the best-polished granite wall in the shade. Not only the quantity, but the quality of the work on offer will help to determine the value of any object.

We live in an age that prefers the quantity of work. For it is easily checked, it is easily apparent to the man in the street, and does not require a practised eye or any other knowledge. There are no mistakes. So and so many day labourers have worked on it for so and so many kreutzers. The man in the street can work that one out. And they want to make the value of the things with which we surround ourselves comprehensible to the man in the street. Otherwise those things would be pointless. Then those materials that require a longer working time will be better respected.

This was not always the case. In the old days building was done with materials that were most easily accessible to anyone. In some areas the wall was covered with brick, in some with stone, in others with cement. Did the people who built in that way feel of lesser value than the architects in stone? It would not have occurred to anyone. Had they had stone quarries nearby, they would, in fact, have built in stone. But bringing stone to the building site from far away seemed to them to be more of a question of money than a question of art. And in the old days art, the quality of the work, was of greater importance than it is today.

But such times also yielded proud, powerful characters in the field of architecture. Fischer von Erlach didn’t need granite to make himself understood. Using clay, chalk and sand, he created works that grip us as strongly as the best constructions from materials that are difficult to work. His spirit, his artistry mastered the most wretched material. He was capable of giving plebeian dust the nobility of art: a king in the sphere of materials.

But in our own times it is not the artist who rules, but the day labourer; not creative thought, but working time. And mastery is also being progressively twisted from the hands of the day labourer, because someone has turned up who can produce the quantitative performance better and more cheaply: the machine.

But all working time, whether accomplished by machine or coolie, costs money. But what if one has no money? Then one begins to fake working time, to imitate material.

Respect for quantity of work is the caste of craftsmen’s worst enemy. For it leads to imitation. But imitation has demoralized a large proportion of our craft. All pride and craftsmanship has fled from them. ‘Book printer, what can you do?’ ‘I can print so that it looks like a lithograph.’ ‘And lithographer, what can you do?’ ‘I can make a lithograph look as if it’s printed.’ ‘Cabinet-maker, what can you do?’ ‘I can carve ornaments that look as stylish as if a plasterer had made them.’ ‘Stucco plasterer, what can you do?’ ‘I imitate mouldings and ornaments so precisely, I make hairline joints that everyone thinks are real, so that they look like the best stonemasonry.’ ‘I can do that too!’ the tinsmith exclaims proudly, ‘if you paint and sand ornaments, it would never occur to anyone that they are made of tin.’ Unhappy society!

A spirit of self-vilification runs through our trade. It should come as no surprise that this class is not in a good way. Such people are not supposed to be in a good way at all. Chin up, cabinet-maker, be proud that you are a cabinet-maker. The plasterer also makes ornaments. You should walk past them without envy or desire. And you, plasterer, why are you concerned about the stonemason? The stonemason makes joints, must sadly make joints, because small stones are more cheaply got hold of than large ones. Be proud that your work does not show the petty joints that carve up column, ornament and wall, be proud of your job, be glad that you are not a stonemason!

But I am wasting my breath. The public does not want a proud craftsman. Because the better one can imitate, the more one is supported by the public. Respect for expensive materials, the surest sign of the parvenu stage at which our people finds itself, would not have it otherwise. The parvenu finds it shaming not to adorn himself with diamonds, shaming not to be able to wear fur, shaming not to live in stone palaces, since he has come to learn that diamonds, fur and stone façades cost a great deal of money. He is unaware that the lack of diamonds, fur or stone façades has no influence on elegance. So since he lacks money he reaches for surrogates. A ludicrous undertaking. For those that he wishes to deceive, the ones whose means would enable him to surround himself with diamonds, furs and stone façades, cannot be deceived. They find such efforts comical. And for the subordinates they are once again unnecessary, if one is aware of one’s superiority.

Over the past few decades imitation has dominated the whole of architecture. The wall covering is made of paper, but on no account is it to show the fact. So it had to be given silk damask, gobelins or carpet patterns. The doors and windows are made of soft wood. But because hard wood is more expensive, they had to be painted as such. Iron had to imitate bronze or copper through applications of those metals. But in the face of precast concrete, an achievement of this century, one was entirely helpless. It is a magnificent material in itself, but the only thought about how to apply it, the same thought that comes to mind with every new material, was: what can it be used to imitate? It was used as a surrogate for stone. And since precast concrete is so extraordinarily cheap, it was wasted on a most substantial scale. The century was gripped by a real plague of concrete. ‘Ah, my dear Mr Architect, can you not apply five guilders more to the façade?’ the vain client probably said. And the architect nailed as many guilders of art to the façade as were demanded of him, and sometimes rather more.

At present precast concrete is used to imitate the plasterer’s work. It is typical of the situation in Vienna that a man vigorously opposed to the rape of material, to imitation, was dismissed as a materialist. Just look at the sophistry: they are the people who place so much value on material that they shrink from no lack of character for its sake and reach for surrogates.

The English have brought us their wallpapers. Unfortunately they cannot send over whole houses. But from the wallpapers we can see what the English want. They are wallpapers that are not afraid to be made of paper. And why should they? There are doubtless wall coverings that cost more money. But the Englishman is not a parvenu. In his home one will never think that the money must have run out. Even the fabrics of his clothes are made of sheep’s wool, and honestly reveal the fact. English fabrics, our fabrics, therefore, do not display the Viennese attitude of ‘I’d love to, but I can’t’, even though they are made only of wool.

And so we reach a chapter that plays the most important role in architecture, with the principle that was supposed to constitute every architect’s ABC, the principle of cladding. The explanation of that principle shall be reserved for the next chapter.