Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

A building such as the Palace of Westminster has a double role to play. It must work reasonably well as a building in which to do parliamentary business, and it must also appropriately symbolize the collective identity of the nation’s policy-makers. We are routinely familiar with the symbolic role, and have no difficulty in recognizing the building as one of the ‘sights’ of London (Figure 5) but are less familiar with its internal organization, which is complex but highly rational — if seen with reference to the activities that were anticipated when it was built. Much has changed since then, and the building has not helped that change, but it was planned round a central axis, with the House of Lords on one side, the House of Commons on the other, and an imposing vaulted lobby in between. A tremendously long corridor runs along the line of the river frontage, leading to a sequence of committee rooms. The rooms were all daylit, and naturally ventilated, because when they were built there was no viable alternative, and in order to make that possible there are courtyards and lightwells. The rationality of the planning affects how well the building works as the parliamentarians go about their business, but has nothing to do with the building’s symbolism, which evokes the medieval past, as a way of demonstrating continuity with that past. This was not intended to be seen as a ‘revolutionary’ building. The building replaced an earlier parliament building, which had been medieval, but there were more reasons than inertia for rebuilding in a medieval style. The Gothic style developed in the Christian cathedrals of northern Europe, so it was seen as more indigenous than the most obvious alternative, which would have been some form of classicism, which has its roots in pagan Greece, and was first imported to Britain by Roman invaders. The architecture here was intended to help along an idea of British identity that was deeply rooted in the place, and rather pious, and because we still recognize many of the architectural gestures, the symbolism still seems to work, even though there have been many social and cultural changes since the building was constructed.

It is not inevitable that a building with a national role would have to appeal to the country’s sense of its ancient identity. When Scotland needed a new building to house its national assembly, it chose Enric Miralles, an avant-gardist architect from Barcelona. The choice was calculated to show that Scotland is not provincial, but has a presence on the world stage, and that it is forward-looking. There was a similar concern to position the Punjab in the modern world when Le Corbusier was given his largest commission, to design a capital city, Chandigarh (Figure 6). In this respect the commission was a great international success. By this time in his career, Le Corbusier had had a tremendous influence on how people thought about how to make cities work. His most famous image of urban design was a model that showed Paris with its boulevards flattened, making room for a grid of enormous residential tower blocks. Needless to say, the idea was not acted on. The ideas had more immediate impact in Latin America, where there were rapidly growing cities and centralized power structures that could see them implemented, but they were designed by others, not the originator of the thinking. Chandigarh was the only city designed by Le Corbusier that was actually built, so it was much anticipated around the world. It presented the architect with particular challenges, in finding ways to make an impression on the sophisticated international architecture scene, while having at his disposal only the materials and craftsmanship to be found locally, and which make it in its way profoundly rooted to the place.