Architecture and aspiration

Architecture and aspiration

I'm often bemused by architectural nostalgia: the admiration for old buildings that are no longer feasible or required - garnish gothic railway stations, overdecorated stuffy theatres, austere and oppressive classical banks. Architects but also lay people tend to bemoan the reduction of such buildings into utilitarian, often anonymous architecture. The post office is no longer a public grand hall but an insignificant small shop or even just a counter in another shop. We appear to find this evolution a kind of degradation; we prefer monumental designs, expensive materials and rich decoration. The success of digital architecture but also the renewed interest in urban-centre high-rise is related to that.

While every building should receive the care and attention it deserves, I fear that we fail to understand a fundamental difference in the role and hence function and character of buildings in different periods. A railway station in the nineteenth century wasn't just a transport hub; it was a transport hub for the affluent. It had to be upmarket to attract the right customers, those interested in luxury and comfort. At the same time, to other people, less affluent, it was aspirational" if you wanted to improve your station in life, this was the kind of environment you should try to get into - from the clients' side, although the servants' side to such places wasn't a bad beginning.

Much of the nostalgia for old-fashioned buildings comes from such aspirational connotations rather than pure aesthetic or historical value: there are not just nice old stuff; they are old stuff we link to luxury, success and high social status - status that could be acquired with money, the Orient Express nostalgia. Architecture has always been aspirational -just think of the Renaissance and Classicism and their role in elevating society; architectural ornamentation as a status symbol; eponymous architecture (labels) and our current keenness to enrich our life with it. In the case of past architecture it is even more so: past aspirations refer not only to historical high points but also to analogies with today's aspirations. Promoting the preservation of even doubtful old buildings is also a mark of culture; supporting such actions has its aspirational aspects, too. Moreover, old aspirational buildings tend not to be as controversial as new ones. On the contrary, they are objects of civic pride, cultural achievement or at least technical achievement.

What is architecture?

What is architecture? 

Is architecture what architects do, make, think, believe? Boring old question and the answer is obviously not: architecture is possible without architects (whether these are defined by training or inclination). One doesn't even have to be a builder to produce architecture (as in vernacular traditions). It's probably safer to define architecture as a fundamental human tendency and capacity, similarly to poetry, music or technology: we need architecture to add meaning to the environments we construct and inhabit, to move beyond the basic yet critical achievement of shelter and accommodation. Architecture should be considered as a societal and cultural layer that architects service rather than determine. I've been told that only a minority of buildings is designed by architects, yet practically every building has architectural aspirations, for example decoration in a possibly recognisable architectural style.

This doesn't make architects superfluous or irrelevant; they remain custodians of architecture, which gives them the opportunity to introduce and interpret, to redirect and safeguard - and they can do it, provide it they manage to avoid hubris: they shouldn't believe they're entitled to do whatever they want, that they are infallible, as was the case with high-rise council flats in post-World War 2 England. These did not develop as social reformers and architects naively believed, bringing much discredit to British modernism, which was ironically following rather interesting directions at the time (late modernism).

Shifts

Shifts

I just found an old note from a book I'd read in the 1980s (Niels Lund Prak, 1968. The languages of architecture. Mouton, The Hague): architecture symbolises ideal worlds, what people should aspire to culturally as well as materially. Both Classicism and Modernism represent a harmonious system that may contrast with the real world. It is no accident that both stress 'pure' and simple forms from which the rest evolves.

How different the world seems now! Firstly, the dipoles: it used to be Classicism versus Modernism, capitalism versus socialism - always two opposites fighting for a clear prize. Nowadays it's more about pluralism, about all kinds of variations that can coexist (although the latest populist tendencies may put an end to that).

Secondly, the cultural aspirations: architecture has always been about aspiration but for a long time now it has been mostly about the material side. Associations with ideologies, including aesthetic ones, have been weakening rapidly, with lifestyle taking their place, not as a means to improvement (social and cultural) but as a goal by itself. More recently, cultural issues have been promising a comeback, as one can see in the environmental awareness of young people. I wonder how this will turn out.

Thirdly, the 'pure' and simple forms: these no longer constitute the basis of architectural composition and morphology, as one can see in digital architecture. Instead, we are more into complexity, both in form and in the processes that produce form.

Taking all three together, I can't say if the world has improved; it has certainly become less predictable.