SO ANCIENT IT’S MODERN (or so modern it’s ancient), is the way we like to think on occasion, not that we’re the first to have tried --Louis Kahn perhaps having most famously succeeded. (Preliminary Study, Museum and Visitors Center, Inland Empire, CA 2022)
That we need to better care for our environment seems self-evident, but environmentalists are not my favorite people. That anyone faced with an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy should discern for themselves how best to handle their situation with respect for the lives of everyone involved seems right, but pro-life and pro-choice activists are annoying, as are gun rights and social justice activists. While certainly at the right time and in the right place, activism can be occasionally effective (1960s civil rights) - it has never been our thing, ideology even less. We’re more into ideas and action-- theory and practice.
MODERNISTS COMPLAINED about the hegemony of the Beaux Art academies a hundred years ago and now modernists are the academy. (Saul Steinberg, New Yorker Cartoon)
It was a confusing time when we were in architecture school. By the 1970s, it was clear that monolithic fidelity to modernism had cracked and while there were a few that advocated for its reform, the loudest called for either writing it off as a big mistake that should never have happened or that everything before it, while interesting, had nothing to do with our inevitable march forward and might as well never had happened. That most of our teachers, visiting critics and guest speakers were too busy arguing with each other to yield for us, their students, some coherent framework in which to pick up skills and knowledge seemed at the time like a rip-off but now more like an object lesson.
FEW MINDS ARE EVER CHANGED with aimless ideological arguments nor paths forged forward --or backward as the case may be. (Peter Eisenman, Leon Krier)
CHOOSE SIDES is what we’re being asked to do: shapes that are self-referential or non-referential in origin and outcome vs. shapes that are single mindedly referential and exclusive. (Peter Eisenman, left; Leon Krier, right)
The architecture of modernism did happen and that of the 4,900 years before it did too. When we refer to the latter as “traditional”, most people know what we mean. But we employ the word “traditional” in confusing ways, sometimes referring to customs and rituals, other times to just about anything we do on a regular basis. In fact, the original use of the word “tradition” emerged from trade and craft disciplines. “Masters,” meaning whoever had mastered the trade or craft, “handed over” (“tradere” in the Latin) useful skills and knowledge that then got passed on. What was shown to work within a prescribed world of whatever it was that someone was making (textiles, furniture, stone masonry) endured within that world for as long as it worked. It was a tradition until it wasn’t. There was not a lot of grandstanding in the process, just trial and error.
INFINITELY ADAPTABLE to time and place this architecture works and yet somehow fails to excite or inspire. (Leon Krier, Citta Nuova, Alessandria, Italy, left; Seaside, FL, right)
BITTERNESS need not be our only response to stupid architecture, as it is within our power to restore our past, imagine a future and live in harmony with the present all at the same time. (Leon Krier, diatribe)
A ONE-TO-ONE RELATIONSHIP between the appearances and purposes of buildings is a dogmatic high modern concept that belies this author’s authenticity and betrays his ideological limits. (Leon Krier, another diatribe)
The original meaning of the word “modern” (“modernus” in the Latin) was “of the present, recent times.” But Modernism (with a capital M) is by now a tradition (International, Mid-century, Brutalist) as much as any other tradition in the 5,000 years we’ve been making buildings. Yet, few would admit it. We have in other words, with our words, caused a rupture; modernism is modern, everything before it is traditional. (It won’t be long before the word “contemporary” offers the word “modern” the same fate.)
WHY YES OF COURSE there are patterns that emerge over the course of building traditions; we can call them patterns or, better, typologies, but it’s what we do with them that matters. A dress pattern does not a dress make (the dress maker does), nor a recipe a meal (the cook does). (A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander, 1977)
AFTER ALL THAT theory what we finally get out of Christopher Alexander, the architect, is vernacular architecture (Austrian architecture in Berkeley, CA no less) which traditional training, imitation, skills, and knowledge could have delivered on its own, no theory required. (Various projects, Christopher Alexander)
IDEOLOGICAL ADHERENCE oddly manifests in almost identical architectures. (Christopher Alexander, left; Leon Krier, right)
And there are some who like it just this way. Ideological activist modernists want nothing to do with anything “traditional” (“old-fashioned, anachronistic”) and ideological activist traditionalists want nothing to do with anything “modern” (“severe, alienating”). Modernism could have been a reform movement, and instead was sold as a revolution (that some insist persist). Now, traditionalists want a counter revolution (and let’s just forget about reform altogether).
PRINCE CHARLES IS RIGHT, parts of London today are ugly, although it didn’t have to be that way—the techniques of modern construction need not have delivered bad modern architecture.
RETREAT is not the answer. (Prince Charles, Leon Krier his architect and advisor, Queen Elizabeth and others at Poundbury the town that Charles built in Dorchester, England)
19TH CENTURY REVIVALISM is not the answer either. (Allan Greenberg, various projects, left; Robert Stern, various projects, right)
These are ideological states of mind that create enemies and eliminate options. These are the close minds of traditionalists no matter which side of the argument, an argument that will never be won and one in which to engage is a waste of energy. The idea that anything that has happened in the story of humanity was an accident or a mistake from which there is nothing to be learned is preposterous (and, also what building ever built was not of its time?). There are always reasons to appreciate and learn from what’s happened even as we look forward to what has not yet happened and what we can make better.
TOO TRADITIONAL FOR OUR COLLEAGUES AND TOO MODERN FOR OUR CLIENTS may mean we’re doing something right. (Preliminary study for McKinley School Classroom Building, Santa Monica, CA 2022)
SENSUOUS SHAPES that are not also obviously biomorphic are today taboo. (Preliminary study for McKinley School Classroom Building, Santa Monica, CA 2022)
TRADITIONAL MOTIFS that are also not somehow manipulated (distorted, fragmented, whatever) are today taboo. (Preliminary study for McKinley School Classroom Building, Santa Monica, CA 2022)
We don’t get to witness all the error in the trial and error that went into most of what survived within various traditions of architecture over 4,900 years. Those old buildings that are still with us mostly worked while most of the accidents and mistakes did not (or were fixed or improved over the years). We are only 100 years into this era and its traditions that, for lack of better terminology, we call “modern”. When after 100 years, traditional practices no longer work and instead persist habitually, ideologically, or dogmatically, they become robotic, the imagination ceases to function, the meaning gets lost, the fulfillment diminishes. Traditions lose vitality and beget reform. We, therefore, are obliged (and have the right) to evaluate what has and hasn’t worked over the course of our time, to refine what has or hasn’t and if it hasn’t, try something else.
A RELIC OF THE PAST an amphitheater is not. It is simply human no matter the application. (Preliminary Study, Museum and Visitors Center, Inland Empire, CA 2022)
NEITHER SPACESHIP NOR RUIN a building that’s anchored in place will look like it’s always been there and always will. (Preliminary Study, Museum and Visitors Center, Inland Empire, CA 2022)