Simon's World

Engineering cultural significance

Recently I got to watch a video of Thom Mayne lecturing at UIC. What really grabbed me, however, was a statement that our school’s director, Bob Somol, made while introducing the speaker:

No one is more surprised [than Thom] that Thom has become the unlikely poster boy of the green architecture movement… This points to the point that rather than make a big deal about it Thom’s building just perform, and perform very well, and that Thom wants to get on with other concerns of architecture, where his interests and investments lie, at the cultural stakes of architecture. [my emphasis]

Here Bob assumes two things: one, that the true calling of architecture lies not in designing buildings but creating cultural significance, and two, that cultural significance can be consciously created by the architect.

This brings up a number of questions that I’m not really prepared to answer unequivocally but which should be examined: Is this kind of engineering of cultural significance possible, or is it destined to fall flat on its face? When did the idea of design for cultural importance start? Was it the Renaissance or did it happen only with the advent of Modernism, or perhaps even later? Le Corbusier certainly had civilizational goals in mind for his work, but I’m not sure that this was the kind of cultural focus that Bob had in mind. Ditto Aalto. Ditto early Mies, ditto the pre-WWII avant-garde. I’m starting to think that it began with one of my least favorite theoreticians, Peter Eisenman, who was either the first or one of the first to suggest the idea of self-referencing architecture. Until then, architects designed buildings for various reasons, but I don’t think it was specifically with the aim of building cultural significance – that was something their creations acquired later, rather as a by-product of their original intent.

In contrast, Eisenman’s seminal House Series project certainly does have cultural significance, especially among architects, and the designs were undoubtedly created not as buildable structures but as cultural statements. Others have followed since. Succeeding waves of “critical architecture” have commented on – what else – the architecture that came before them. Even the “post-critical” and “projective” architecture that Bob (incidentally also a former Eisenman disciple) remains firmly self-referencing, revolving only in it own insular world. Social, environmental, technical concerns be damned – as long as there’s something for the illuminati to talk about.

With the advent of Eisenman and the spread of his idea that true Modernist architecture should be self-referencing, the discipline lost some of its multidimensionality. No longer would buildings (i.e. “architectural” buildings – the stuff that ends up being discussed in schools and by critics) be built with the aim of honoring someone or something, to illustrate the power of this or that religion or idea, or for that matter to simply house people or their workplaces. This new architecture was and is being created to talk about itself, its own significance. That seems very symptomatic of our PR-driven world, where being in the tabloids is the highest possible level of achievement for many. Design for cultural significance has turned into design for publicity. That’s a thin foundation to build an entire discipline on, in my humble opinion.

There are exceptions to the rule, but they generally get short shrift from the academic establishment. And even someone like Daniel Libeskind, with his much scoffed-at symbolism, can easily be accused of pandering to the media more than really working with the significance of the symbols he uses. So his new WTC will be 1776 feet tall? So it will look like the Statue of Liberty? Not the most sublime of references. Still, as at least partially a monument to the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks, it was the sole entry that was unabashedly and refreshingly NOT self-referencing. Maybe that’s why the public responded to it, and not to some of the “cool” entries that stared just a bit too deeply into their own disciplinary belly-buttons.

I think it’s time for something to shift somewhere deep down – someone will have to break through this wall of self-adoring babble that leads to nowhere. Koolhaas and his programmatic approach is probably a good direction for starters, but I also see green architecture giving the architectural discipline a much-needed breath of fresh air – and yes, the pun was intended.

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