A COMMUNITY OF SHARED VALUES can accomplish just about anything as this one has demonstrated in conjuring a place that will become its repository of those same values, past, present, and as they evolve. (Museum of Redlands, Redlands, CA, currently under construction)
Toward the end of an interview with a kid recently, we asked, “who are some of your favorite architects, dead or alive?” with the caveat that there was no right answer. We wanted an understanding or feeling for his point of view, what he valued in his education and work. His response was “hmmm, no one’s ever asked me that question” and he could not answer it. Steve and I thought and did not say: “Really? There is no one you can think of (and really no one has ever asked you)?” His answer would have been, it appeared, a resigned “no.” No need to ask or answer, the sense of defeat was palpable.
ALTERNATELY EMBRACED by anarchists (individual autonomy) and fascists (historical determinists), Nietzsche identified nihilism as that condition of individualism predetermined by history through which we must temporarily endure to come out on the other end renewed.
JOAN DIDION first identified the nihilistic consequences of the surrender of cultural norms in the collapse of the countercultural movement in California in the 1960s from hope and love into disarray and disillusionment.
SOCIAL OBSERVERS, such as Neil Postman as early as the 1980s, foresaw the role of near-constant entertainment (radio, television, social media, and soon the metaverse) in the dissolution of societal integrity and our participation in it. (Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1984)
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, whatever form it takes, is seen by those such as Robert Putnam who study it as crucial in the vitality of both our democracy and our individual wellbeing. (Bowling Alone, 1990).
TOMBSTONES IN THE SKY was how New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the first World Trade Towers upon their completion in 1973 about the same time as our involvement in the Vietnam War was coming to an end, a war then memorialized ten years later in Washington DC. (World Trade Center, Minoru Yamasaki, New York NY 1973 above; Vietnam War Memorial, Washington DC, Maya Lin 1982, below)
A 19th century German philosopher first named such a state of mind, one in which there is nothing of value or to value, nothing to live for, just sustained apathy. He called it “Nihilism” and he was Friedrich Nietzsche. The idea was, like German romanticism, melodramatic, but to not miss his point he was talking not about an individual’s state of mind, but rather a collective state of mind, meaning not individual but shared values. It was possible, he thought, that a group of people (a state or nation) could be made up of individuals with individual values and live in a state of nihilism--no shared values, little to nothing in common to live for, no sustained vitality as a society.
NOTOREITY for these architects first arrived upon completion of a structure whose sole purpose seemed to be to dissolve and confound, nothingness itself being both the effect and the condition pursued. (Blur Building, Yverdo-les-Bains, Switzerland, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, 2002)
ALIENATION, whether intended or not, is the effect and the condition achieved in the location, orientation, and configuration of this building. (Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, 2006)
ABSTRACT NOMENCLATURE is employed in a pseudo-academic manner to justify what is nothing more than hedonistically conceived nihilistic gestures devoid of engagement of any kind. (Broad Museum in Los Angeles, CA, 2015, top; the Performing Arts Venue at Hudson Yards in NY, 2019, middle; and the Hirshorn Museum Addition in Washington DC. Unbuilt, below, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro)
Nietzsche had, he believed, already observed nascent nihilism in late 19th century Europe and predicted that it would go on to permeate the western world throughout the 20th century and into the next. The cause in his view was that western, particularly European cultures, had “exhausted” themselves, that our cultural traditions had burnt out and there was no turning back, only moving forward. It was “the end of history.” Moving forward would require freedom from cultural norms or shared values and greater individual autonomy. Individualism, in other words, was a good thing, our only ticket out. After a century or two of muddling through, when we would rally around a new set of shared values, new culture(s?) would (fantastically and apparently from scratch) emerge.
THESE ARE OUR CHOICES? That Stanford University is a different place in a different time than it was upon its founding in 1886 is undeniable, and while arches and rustication are hardly required, is there really no means with which to relate a major new building to the institution it serves? (Cahill Center for Visual Arts, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, Stanford, CA, 2014 above; Memorial Quadrangle, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, Stanford, CA 1885)
DITTO (Gates Hall, Cornell University, Morphosis, Ithica, NY, 2012 above; Cornell Main Quad, Cornell University, Ithica NY, 1865)
And who better than the U.S. of A. to lead that charge? Our individualism is world-class. We lead in competitive consumption, eternal entertainment, celebrity fetishization, and the shunning of social institutions. We also win at social inequity and alienation, the proliferation of alienating environments, and environmental annihilation. The threat that Nietzsche saw in exhausted cultures seems to have been replaced by exhausted or at least exhausting (and increasingly unfulfilling) individualism.
NO ONE HOME is the message received with these two buildings despite that one is a workplace and the other a school (Cal Trans Headquarters, Morphosis, Los Angeles, CA 2004, above; Cooper Union, Morphosis, New York, NY, 2009, below)
STAY AWAY is the message received despite both buildings’ roles in housing science students and researchers presumably to the benefit of society. (Gates Hall, Cornell University, Morphosis, Ithica, NY, 2012 above; Hypo Alpe-Adria Center, Morphosis, Austria, 2002)
STAY OUT is the message received in these environments. (Various interiors, Morphosis Architects)
As a painter, writer, musician, or actor it’s easier to not worry about such things, to instead live just as Nietzsche (Emerson, Hemingway, Rand, etc.) promoted. Excel as an individual, “live your own truth” and be celebrated for it. But for those architects who see their art as primarily a social one, meaning requiring of a partner in the making of it--that partner being society, this presents a problem. It has forced architects to shun public work and instead pursue private work—rich people’s homes, their businesses, and the “cultural” institutions they support—and to sustain the work, stand out and posture originality at whatever cost (to cities and society).
VIOLENT GESTURES relentlessly employed no matter the application attract attention however fleetingly and at whatever cost. (Various projects by Daniel Libeskind)
But while Nietzsche’s prediction was eerily accurate in understanding where America would be in the 21st century, it was not perfectly so. Because Nietzsche was also under the spell of German historicism, a quasi-metaphysical view of history in which everything is predetermined, and we are all merely marching in lockstep with it, his vision was total and without exception. Instead, shared values did and do thrive. Stands and eddies of institutional integrity, committed communities, individuals committed to other individuals have withstood the winds and currents of the individualism of our time. We find such exceptions (and exceptional people) in local governments, schools and school districts, universities, and enclaves of every demographic stripe. For those of us for whom these partners are a part of the art, it is only a matter of seeking them out and, in turn, showing what can be done in partnering with them.
REGRESSIVE TECHNIQUES, such as the stacking of shipping containers like the stacking of stones at a Mayan temple or Egyptian pyramid, are an inevitable consequence of a lack of imagination starved of cultural resources.
PREFABRICATED BUILDINGS are another mirage of the imagination that will forever remain out of reach at wide-spread (or civic-minded) applications.
Also, we have not forgotten. We do not believe that history ended a century ago, that there’s nothing pragmatic to be learned from anything before 1920 or since, that we’re supposed to live in a state of eternal amnesia, aimlessness, and cluelessness pretending to conjure our work out of nothing. That kid, who we did hire, demonstrated what Nietzsche perhaps had not expected in his vision of the future: individual nihilism. Not ever having experienced a community of shared values, other than merely technical ones, at school or at work, this intelligent, naturally talented young person had been starved of resources. Had he stayed with us, he may have overcome his malnutrition, he may have learned what resources there are out there if you only you look, and through the looking, thrive as an individual in service to others while loving doing it.
ONE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT teaches that immersion while young in the rich and fertile thought and art of our forebears is what engenders confidence and creativity later in life. (Preliminary studies, The Cambridge School, San Diego, CA, Johnson Favaro 2021.)
MUSEUM OF REDLANDS Arrival court, east loggia, and museum entrance under construction (Redlands, CA 2021)
MUSEUM OF REDLANDS South gallery under construction. (Redlands, CA 2021)