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Alvafamila
Joined: 10 Jun 2004
Posts: 45
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
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 Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 12:45 am Post subject: Great Editorial, A MUST READ!!! |
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Form Follows Inspiration
By ALAIN de BOTTON
Published: July 11, 2004
LONDON — Recent events have played into the hands of those who believe that architecture has lost its way and become — in some cases fatally — too fancy for its own good. Last week's report on the collapse in May of the Paul Andreu-designed terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, which killed four people, came amid the sudden critical scrutiny of and public scandals over Mr. Andreu's opera house under construction in Beijing. There were the problems with Santiago Calatrava's roof for the Olympic Stadium in Athens, which threatened the very opening of the games. The Whitney Museum of American Art dismissed Rem Koolhaas's plans for its extended galleries on the grounds that they were too bold and expensive. And in the squabble over ground zero, the only thing the competing designers seem to agree on is the need to build a Freedom Tower vastly taller than most New Yorkers would feel safe living and working in.
These setbacks and controversies have allowed sober-minded skeptics to accuse the profession of abandoning its original purpose — holding up a roof and keeping out the weather — in favor of reckless and phantasmagorical aesthetic effects, best exemplified by the wavy titanium surfaces of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim or the angled walls of Mr. Koolhaas's new Central Library in Seattle. Thus the fate of Mr. Andreu's "prestige" airport terminal seems a most old-fashioned and (for some) grimly satisfying morality tale: how pretension can win out over common sense; how those who look at the stars can end up falling in the ditch.
The skeptics are certainly right in one regard: the last decade has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of buildings whose design seems motivated not primarily by any functional goal but by a desire to enhance the status of the cities or countries that have commissioned them. But to imply that this strays from architecture's historical goals is to deny history.
More than 150 years ago in "The Stones of Venice," John Ruskin remarked that architecture had two missions: to provide shelter on the one hand, to glorify on the other. And it's this second task that the new libraries, museums, airports and town halls appear to have taken up with gusto. With the help of rare materials and complex new technologies, these buildings have helped to flatter and idealize their often hitherto neglected environments. Their appearance speaks to us of modernity and intelligence, of elegance and luxury.
Yet because we live in a practical and literal age, we are liable to be suspicious of the grand claims of new buildings. We tend to believe that works of art should avoid idealizing anyone or anything. They should instead reflect and accommodate reality: buildings should speak of people as they really are, rather than as they hope to be. But this is a fairly recent idea, the language of the form-follows-function modernism of the mid-20th century. Rather, the new high-status buildings have tradition on their side.
Architects have long thought themselves to be in the business of glorification — think of how one's eyes are directed skyward in the Pantheon in Rome, of the soaring spires and stained glass of Gothic cathedrals. This tradition endured, and even profited by, the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The grand 16th-century houses of Palladio and his British and American followers were clearly designed to make a case for their owners' best sides.
One typical example: In 1764, the great British designer Robert Adam was approached by Lord Mansfield, Britain's chief justice, to remodel his house, Kenwood. It emerged as an idealized embodiment of all the virtues that the highest legal authority of a country might wish to possess. The ornate ceiling of the library depicted "Hercules Between Glory and the Passions," "Justice Embracing Peace, Commerce and Navigation" (it looks like a much-longed-for reunion) and portraits of Religion, Jurisprudence, Mathematics and Philosophy.
Our eyes tend to glaze over when we are directed to look up to a ceiling with allegorical representations. We are not only bored and wearied but, more important, we may find something offensive about having to admire the virtues of aristocrats — or of cities or nations. We have trouble ridding our minds of an awareness of how often reality departs from what is presented on the walls.
Yet, contrary to popular supposition, the architects who built in a grand, idealizing fashion were not naïve about human nature. They knew that most of those who used their buildings would not be as kind or good as the architecture implied. Rather, the buildings embodied an aspiration, they were intended as a goad to virtue. They were a kind of propaganda.
It's common to make a severe distinction between art (good) and propaganda (very bad). Whereas art doesn't try to sell us anything or inspire us to perform any particular activities, propaganda is given over to whipping us up to admire tyrants or exhorting us to produce more for the motherland. But it might be worth redrawing our feelings on the subject by remembering that, in the literal sense, the word propaganda refers only to the promotion of a set of beliefs. That many beliefs have historically been associated with political ideologies or commercial preferences of the more unpleasant kind is more an accident of history than anything intrinsic to the word propaganda itself. There is nothing about a work of propaganda, per se, that means it must direct us toward the support of a corrupt monarch or deceitful corporation. All an object must do to count as propaganda is to use its technical resources to direct us toward something — to enhance our sensitivity and readiness to respond favorably toward any idea, vision of life, person, belief and so on.
Defined in this way, a lot more things suddenly seem as if they deserve to be seen as propaganda, including a museum or an airport. A building can exhort the user to imitate and participate in the qualities implicit in its form. The advantage of calling a building a piece of propaganda is that it helps us to focus on the more directive side of all works of art. It makes us see that every consciously created object is trying to tell us something. Furthermore, it shows that there may be nothing particularly wrong with an attempt to direct our behavior and spirit, so long as the direction is a valuable one.
To defend many works of recent architecture, one could therefore argue that they are rather nobly trying to change the way we perceive certain places and cities and forms of travel. They are attempting to present a glorified image of Bilbao or Seattle or Athens — an image that places the stress on all the most attractive sides of these places. Even if we don't always approve of their appearance, we should at least be sympathetic to the ambitions behind their constructions. They represent attempts to lend dignity to their surroundings, and that — assuming the ceiling doesn't cave in — may be one of the most serious and traditional functions of architecture.
Alain de Botton is the author of "The Consolations of Philosophy" and, most recently, "Status Anxiety." |
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Richard Haut
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 1055
Location: Nice, France
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 5:42 am Post subject: |
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Very interesting article, but is the recent phenomenon "a desire to enhance the status of the cities or countries that have commissioned them" or is it in some cases requiring the architect to create a status that has ceased to exist ?
In Bilbao the problems were clear and well known - a tough town that needed help to pull itself up by its bootstraps and Gehry helped.
The lust for the 'tallest' at Ground Zero is the clearest example. The greatest crime in American history and the administration destroyed evidence and obstructed investigation. What can an architect do after that ? What they have done is try to deal with the disgrace over whether it is worth giving up a bit of rental to show respect for those killed - and to try to tolerate the irritation that people might actually want to visit the site to show their personal respect.
I note that you are based in London - dignity cannot be shown in design unless it comes from those with self-respect.
The profession in Britain is under dual pressure - increasingly architects in Britain are used as marketing tools to help raise funds (a significant number of UK projects do not have funding), and in many cases are then dumped and good designs finished off as cheaply as possible. The other pressure comes from the fact that Britain - a nation with a long and proud culture - is going through one of the greatest identity crises of its history.
The jingoistic yowling mob whipped up by the jingoistic yowling press have created a society (with one of the lowest standards of living in Europe) which goes deranged over a football match.
Example ? Aside of death and other threats (in the tens of thousands) against a Swiss referee, attacking Portuguese property and people, the mob also attacked branches of a sandwich chain called Pret-à-Manger. Despite the name, the company is 100% British.
The British mob also goes deranged over harm to children. What is wrong with that ? 1) The UK, with the US, was responsible for the deaths of over a million children in Iraq - and nobody cares, and 2) the yowling press had to stop its encouragement of direct attacks on those who harmed children because the mob attacked not a paedophile, but a paediatrician. (Anyone outside Britain may find this hard to believe - anyone who knows Britain will find it perfectly credible).
A society that is being deliberately and calculatedly debased and humiliated. And yet Britain has a fine architectural profession - decent people.
The phenomenon that you describe is a symptom of despair.
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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