The other night I was watching the mid90s remake of Richard III when I noticed something that had never been picked up on in previous viewings. As the atmosphere of the movie shifted towards something more fascist and more controlling, the designs and themes of the architecture went from wide open and liberating to something very modernist and cold in its design. This brings me to the question at hand: to what extent does the nature of a society's political orientation leave an impression on the architecture at hand?
I would argue that the more the an institution seeks to influence/control the environment or the actions of those within it, the more it will generate designs and themes that are unnatural. The reason for this being that on some level political influence relies on total control, be it violence or monetary interest, etc. As such, one of the ways that such control is expressed is by ultimately establishing that nature itself is to be control by use of such unnatural forms as it declare that which is organic, flowing, timeless to be rendered moot before the monolith of state.
Ultimately, the most fully expressed forms of state influenced architecture can be seen in the way that modernist (and subsequently "international") architectural was co-opted for states that sought either fascism or socialism as a model.
Ultimately the aesthetic was to be one in which function was always supreme to form, all was mechanical and that history was irrelevant and that above all the result was to be wholly utilitarian.
The most marked attempts into such urban planning forays are those attempted by the French, long time socialists and 3rd rate imperial power. One of the premier Modernists and primary influence on the French "suburbs" was Le Corbusier.
One should note his 1922 design for a city build wholly from the ground up for three million Frenchmen: Ville Contemporaine
Known for such a statist agenda, the French model shown above is the perfect example.
Much like socialism and fascism though, the problems arise with the architecture that arise also with the regime, they will inevitably be rebuffed. Man has a natural tendency toward favoring that which is organic, that which is a natural outgrowth of development and design. He is far from a machine nor can he be programmed to act as one. That fact that he is an individual, independent of the conceptualizations of the state planners, means that those things which would seek to put him into a collective are that which he will most lash out against.
This is what we see in places such as the French suburbs and the British Council Flats. The malaise and despair brought on by such cold surroundings that are hostile to the very basic tendencies of human nature lead to a backlash. In them we see corruption, crime, violence and no desire at all for self improvement. Such a crushing rebuke to all that makes man yearn to make his own mark in the world brings nothing but misery, pain and antisocial behavior, above all it brings only the lowest common denominator out in the actions of men.
contrast this for a moment with the classical form espoused by the Greco-Roman model and subsequently by the Neo-Classicists in the 18th through mid 19th centuries.
one should note the designs used by such places as the US Capitol building, the Roman Senate and various other structures. What one sees in them is the use of empty space. They are vast structures but often very empty inside. Essentially, they believed in letting the structure breathe. I was posit, that such a space is an area where man would be best served for reflection, relaxation and carrying on with discussion. Such regimes, at least initially, had it as their goal to encourage virtue, debate and other high minded ideals.
By ensuring that there was a natural, flowing and accommodating environment for men to feel at home in, it ensured that man could engage in business and discourse in the most unencumbered way possible. Were the structures grand and lined with white marble and timeless? Yes, but if anything that was a reaffirmation of the way in which the society sought men would generate its thoughts.
Where one society viewed people as numbers and data and parts of a larger mechanical system, its architecture reflected it and likewise when a society views itself as a sanctuary for grandness, organic social evolution, discourse and liberating individualism, it demonstrates it as well.
3 comments:
Yeah, I think you'll really like Participations. He's got some really neat ideas about how to conceive of everything.
Hope you feel better soon.
thanks for the kind words ashok. ive got some great films coming in queue from netflix this week. we should have a blast with them.
Interesting post, Charles.
I'm quite intrigued by your question: "to what extent does the nature of a society's political orientation leave an impression on the architecture at hand?"
You might enjoy Kenneth Clarke's [i]Civilisation[/i] as it traces the architectural legacy of Europe with quite a close reading of the cultural and intellectual factors that influenced European art and architecture. Certainly the scale and design of gothic cathedrals during the high Middle Ages reflect the religious commitment of those who built them, just as the human-scale and proportions of the Florentine Renaissance evidenced a renascent commitment to humnanism and classical thought.
When we come to the Modernism/Totalitarian conflation I'm not so sure. Is modernism/internationalism specific to Fascism, Nazism, or the Soviet Bertolt Brecht's opinion that the spare clean lines of modernism were a reaction to the mud, blood, and disorder of the Great War; an attempt to turn the churned earth of a -tiled bathroom.
This leads us on to a stylistic difference important in this discussion. While Fascism and Modernism are often linked (Mussolini's Fascism can be interpreted as a particularly aggressive political form of Marinetti's Futurism) Hitler was no fan of the Bauhaus, many of whom fled the Third Reich. Hitler's architecture as refracted through Albert Speer was a caricatured heroic realism: everything bigger, bolder, grander, less subtle, a Wagner Opera cast in stone and concrete. Hitler and Stalin were intrigued by modernism, just as they were intrigued by aeroplane engines, machine-guns, and radio communication, but let's remember Hitler closed the Bauhaus and turned it into an SS officer-training centre.
The Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and post-war Brutalism held to the precept of "form following function" and I enjoy the clear-eyed utopianism of that aim.I'm fascinated by the effects of architecture and physical environment on human behavior, which leads something else that intrigues me: whether that is just a culturally conditioned response (like when we go into a cathedral and we feel like being quiet because it's what we feel you do in a cathedral) or whether certain arrangements of geometries have a psychological effect upon the observer. It's my suspicion that it's mostly a learned response: our emotional response to a medieval castle in the Carpathians would probably be informed by our familiarity with Dracula or the tropes of gothic horror. A medieval small-holder in the shadow of that castle and conscious of an attack by Turks would probably have had a much more appreciative and positive interpretation of its reassuring fortified presence.
Similarly, how much are the responses that people have to Brutalist architecture (cold, sterile, uninviting; an abrupt defiance of anything human, emotive, organic, warm, safe, etc......)retropsective responses? I don't think it was the explicit intention of the architects to create something that felt uninviting or unsafe. They talked of the "honesty" of the style, the "clean" lines etc. Unfortunately they didn't predict the adverse reactions people would have when they had to interact with those buildings, most of which happened post-WWII in the newly rebuilt Europe. I think one could make the argument that a lot of the problems with the Brutalist tower blocks came from the socio-economic climate. Lots of poor people relocated to huge concrete buildings that they had no personal stake in, forced to live on top of each other, and without the job prospects to make successful lives for themselves. The buildings themselves were intended to replace those destroyed in wartime and if they so often ironically resembled the bunkers and pillboxes of WWII it's because wartime had taught the architects the functionality of concrete and the necessity of quick construction, the principles of fortification beaten into the plough-shares of rebuilding shattered cities.
Does Brutalist architecture facilitate crime? Certainly those same military bunker-style concrete stairwells that would be so easy to defend against enemy troops make equally good places to get raped or mugged. But is there cause and effect? I don't think so.
Personally, I'm a fan of the aesthetics of Modernism, even Brutalism. They were utopian projects and I've even grown to like the starkness of the many Brutalist buildings here in Britain. J.G. Ballard said that cities are the scar tissue of history and I'm glad that we still have these architectural scars to connect us to the turmoil of the 20th century.
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