Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

One of the things that makes our surroundings feel right is familiarity. We grow accustomed to our surroundings and shape our habits around them, so that even if the surroundings interfere with what we’re trying to do, we are accustomed to dealing with the problems. Buildings which are part of the daily scene come to have significance simply by being there. It is possible for a building with no artistic accomplishment to become meaningful and significant for large numbers of people, simply by having been there all their lives. In the same way that I feel at home in my house, I feel a bond of recognition when I see a familiar landmark, and some buildings have been designed with that role in mind. For example the very prominent city hall in Philadelphia has this role for the inhabitants of the city. Artistically it is quite an odd building, and it has not been widely imitated by architects in other parts of the world. Its principal significance is local, but locally it is very significant indeed. For many years it was the tallest building in the city — a statue of the city’s founder, William Penn, stands at the top of its tower, and it was seen as symbolically appropriate that he should not be overtopped. The city centre’s streets are planned on a grid, which is broken by the city hall, so it is the one building in the centre that stops vistas, and it is visible from a long way off. The oddity of the design makes it unique and identifiable with this single point on the surface of the earth. It is not a generic interchangeable building that could be anywhere and just happens to be here, but is a symbolic anchor-point around which the city grew. The city hall therefore acts as a symbol of the status of the city and the state of Pennsylvania.

National monuments

At national level something similar happens, but at a larger scale. The buildings that represent the nation to itself are grander again, and more generally recognized, because they also have a role in representing the nation to the rest of the world. In Washington DC, the Capitol building, the White House and the monuments along the Mall have become the buildings that have this symbolic role, and they have a duty to reflect the status of the nation on the international stage. In the UK the equivalent monuments are the Houses of Parliament (the Palace of Westminster), Buckingham Palace, and the ministries along Whitehall, running up into Trafalgar Square. In Paris there is a significant difference, because the monuments that have the greatest symbolic prominence are not seats of government, but of culture. The Champs Elysées from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower have come to represent the identity of the French nation overseas more evocatively than the National Assembly and the president’s palace. Where the capital city did not already provide the necessary accretion of monuments, some nations have erected a purpose-designed national monument, such as in Budapest, where an architectural composition supports a weight of symbolism from various sources — Christian, pagan neoclassical, and historical — to show that the Hungarians are descended from wild horsemen, but are now part of the civilized colloquy of nations. The various states in Italy did not unify into an Italian nation until the 19th century, and the vast Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome was designed to commemorate the event, and remind all Italians of their new collective identity, drawing on the Roman imperial past. These monuments are in the capital cities of various nations, but their role is to act as a symbol for people who live beyond the city.