Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

If we are more appreciative of foreigners and their works than were the ancient Greeks, we are also prepared to read and misread signs in buildings that belong to cultures other than our own. A monument such as the Taj Mahal (Figure 23) is as rooted in its own traditions as the Parthenon, and it can be understood with reference to those traditions, as one of a long line of funeral monuments, which surpasses the others by being unusually extravagant and exceptionally beautiful. The image of the Taj Mahal is circulated all over the world, but when that happens, it is rarely read with knowledge of its local culture. In the international culture of global tourism, the Taj Mahal is presented as an alluringly exotic image of the whole subcontinent of India, just as the Sydney Opera House is used to signify Australia. These images become familiar around the world, and are part of the tourist culture. So it happens that when a traveller in a foreign land manages to track down these well-known sights and photographs them, what happens is not so much a confrontation with something original and unaccountable, as a recognition of something familiar. The classic tourist photograph (‘Here I am, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower’) is not a way of learning about world architecture — there are clearer photographs with better explanations in the guidebooks — but of having evidence that one belongs to the privileged élite that travels the world. More people than ever before can travel to the far side of the world, and do so without great difficulty and without needing any very compelling reason for doing so. News and ideas are transmitted round the world with even greater facility and speed, as certain aspects of our culture become globalized. If we want to know more about the Taj Mahal and its significance, then we need to study the architecture of Islamic northern India, and Persia, from where the architect came. If we want to know more about the meaning and significance of the forms of the Sydney Opera House building then we do not find them in the Australian outback, but in Denmark, and perhaps the Mediterranean, where the architect had built himself a house. The cultural influences are not tied to the place in the same way.

_{23. Mausoleum of the Taj Mahal, Agra, India (1630–53); architect: Ustad ‘Isa (dates unknown). The famously beautiful mausoleum of the Taj Mahal was built as a memorial to Mumtaz I-Mahal, by her husband the Shah Jehan, Emperor of Mughal India. The architect’s name was forgotten, but rediscovered from documentary evidence found in the 1930s. He was brought from Persia, and the design is the refined product of centuries of Islamic tradition. It is the centrepiece of a monumental complex that includes a red sandstone mosque and gardens with plants and reflecting pools. The mausoleum is entirely covered in white marble that gives the building an ethereal quality, whether it is reflecting intense sunlight into its shadows, picking up the subdued light of the moon, or the colour of the setting sun. The sight of the building moves all commentators to hyperbole, and it accumulates unsubstantiated romantic myths.}