Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

Another part of our culture is that which we have deliberately set out to acquire, in one way or another. It is clear that we can deliberately educate our tastes. It is less clear why we would choose to do so, as at the outset the effort outweighs the immediate pleasures. We must have a conviction that something good will come of the effort that we put into these things. With music for example it is rare to find a piece that sounds best at its first hearing, and if it sounds worse as we get to know it then we are bound to think that it is bad music. We need to familiarize ourselves with the music’s sound-world, so that we have a sense of what sound sequences are possible, and then we can listen in a way where we can be happy with our immediate responses, so that one can be prepared for listening to a piece by Mozart by knowing other compositions by him; but familiarity with Mozart’s polished elegance would not be enough preparation to be able to enjoy one’s first hearing of a piece by Bartok, with complex astringent harmonies and the lively irregular rhythms of Hungarian folk dances. It is only when one is more familiar with his sound-world that the music comes to have the power to move. Similarly with architecture there are buildings that follow recognizable patterns — the most pervasive across the development of Western civilization being the varieties of classicism. There are also regional traditions, and the recent international tradition of modernism and its variants which can turn into individual personal traditions, as in the case of Frank Gehry and other architects who design ‘signature’ buildings around the world, where part of a building’s prestige comes from the fact that it is the work of an identifiable designer, and can be recognized by people who take an interest in contemporary architecture. A city’s prestige can grow by collecting such buildings, which show that it has a place in the cosmopolitan world. We can get to know our local buildings by chance, and especially if we use them regularly we can form strong views about them, responding to whether they help us or frustrate us as we try to go about our lives. Without particularly thinking about it, we are probably quietly pleased that these buildings continue to be there, acting as reference points against which to plot our progress through a familiar city. It would be possible for the buildings in question to be quite ordinary, or if my journey to work were to take me through Westminster, then I might find that I was treating national monuments such as the Palace of Westminster in just this way, as local landmarks. Our reactions to the buildings depend as much on our ways of thinking about them as they do on the buildings themselves, providing that the buildings remain reliably in place. But this way of thinking about buildings has only local significance, and would not prompt anyone to make a journey to see the buildings in question. For that we need to be convinced that the building in question is very special indeed for one reason or another. In some cases the building might be extravagantly eyecatching and unlike anything else that we have seen, or — as is the case with the Seagram Building and the Parthenon — be the highly accomplished ‘original’ example of a widely used building type, which makes it in some way authoritative. They have significance not only because they are fine buildings, but also because they are part of a story that is told about the development of architecture through the ages. The key buildings in that story form a ‘canon’ — a set of buildings that everyone with a certain level of polite culture might be expected to know. The German word for this level of culture is Bildung, for which there is no precise English equivalent, but there is nevertheless still a feeling that one ought to know about certain buildings. If I realized in the course of conversation that an architectural historian of towering reputation had not heard of the Parthenon, then I for one would feel inclined to think that there was something fraudulent about the reputation. Some buildings are so regularly used as reference points in our culture that not to know them is to show that one does not participate in the culture. And the culture in question here is not local but international — which is not to say that it is uniform everywhere. If I look back at the list of illustrations selected for this book, it is plain enough that I am writing from within a Western tradition. The cottage that is shown in Figure 2 was chosen as a fairly typical example of a low status traditional building, and no one would expect an architectural historian to recognize it with any precision. It is not famous. All the rest of the buildings are well known, with the exception of the Etruscan temple, which is more specialized but necessary for the story that I was trying to tell at that point. Most of the buildings have stood the test of time and have already shown themselves to be useful reference points in the discussion and analysis of architecture. Some personal favourites such as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Kimbell Museum by Louis Kahn have not found their way into the discussion, which surprises me. Had I been from a different part of the world, then my attempt to give an impression of architecture would have included some different examples. I would have had fewer buildings from Western Europe, and my sense of what is central and what peripheral would certainly be different if I were rooted in a different tradition. However, many of the same buildings would certainly have been included in other people’s selections: the idea is to give an introduction to a range of buildings with wide significance, and most of them will be familiar to anyone who has taken an interest in the subject. It is possible to imagine alternative canons, based around the telling of different stories about architecture, that would generate a different choice of buildings. That would amount to a radical departure, whereas the aim of this book is to introduce a selection of buildings of acknowledged merit. Once a building has an established place in the canon then it does one no good as a novice to challenge its place there. There is no doubting the merit of the Parthenon or Bourges Cathedral, and if we go round telling people that we’re not impressed with them then that stands as a judgement on our understanding, which can be discounted, not on the buildings, which continue to be seen as outstandingly good. This is the means by which fine buildings become great buildings. They cross a threshold and become unassailable, as any attempt to denigrate them simply undermines the credibility of the critic. If one is not impressed with the pyramids, then one had better learn to be impressed by them. Naïve wonder still has a place in our experience, and buildings that make us feel it are certainly to be valued. Gehry’s building at Bilbao might do that. The building is striking and fascinating, and does not initially prompt a feeling of recognition, but of incomprehension, which is the root of wonder and exploration. It is however an emotion that we must experience in small doses in our everyday lives, partly because even the strangest buildings rapidly become familiar if they are part of the daily round, and partly because if we wondered too much then we would never get anything done.