Architecture and building
(An introduction to architecture and architectural history)
This article looks at some of the ways in which architecture has been defined in the past and today, and at the problems of giving boundaries to the subject. It is also concerned with the reasons for studying architecture and the question of individual taste. The question ‘What is architecture?’ may at one level seem obvious yet there has been, and continues to be, considerable debate about what should be included in the term and we all have our own ideas and preconceptions.
According to Le Corbusier, ‘Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses seen in light’.1 For him Architecture with a capital A was an emotional and aesthetic experience, but if we restricted our definition of architecture solely to those buildings that raised our spirits, then we would end up with rather a short list. Depending on which dictionary you use, architecture is defined as the art or science of building, or as one of the fine arts. That is to say it is concerned with the aesthetic arts, as opposed to the useful or industrial arts such as engineering. When the Crystal Palace was erected in Hyde Park, London, in 1851 it was praised for its space, lightness and brilliancy and for its ‘truthfulness and reality of construction’, but ‘the conviction has grown on us that it is not architecture: it is engineering of the highest merit and excellence, but not architecture’.
In some views there is a clear distinction between architecture, building and engineering, and architecture is seen as ‘art’, whereas building and engineering are seen as utilitarian. It is a debate that still continues. In 2002 when Wilkinson Eyre Architects won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize for Architecture for the Gateshead Millennium Bridge over the River Tyne, there was considerable debate on whether it should more properly be seen as architecture or as engineering. The bridge is for pedestrians and bicycles and is the world’s first rotating/tilting footbridge. Popularly known as the ‘blinking eye’, this design was voted for by the people of Gateshead, in a competition for a bridge to link Gateshead and Newcastle and complement the six existing bridges. This dualism between art on the one hand and utility or function on the other continues, but it is unsatisfactory for it does not address the complex interlinking of the two.
Crystal Palace, London, 1851 ( Joseph Paxton)
There is an enormous variety of types of building across the world, and there is still considerable debate about what should be included in the term ‘architecture’ and what should not. Many would agree that large, expensiveb and prestigious buildings representing powerful sectors of society – such as palaces, temples, cathedrals and castles, known as polite architecture should be included, but would question the inclusion of cottages, garages or railway stations. We may enjoy the moss-covered thatched roofs and mellow walls of country cottages or admire the skill and craftwork of pole and dhaka (clay) homesteads in Africa; however because they are modest structures that professional architects did not design, some would argue that they are not architecture. Such buildings may be visually pleasing and intricately crafted, but until recently they were not deemed worth studying as architecture. These cottages and homesteads are examples of traditional or vernacular architecture. Local builders or the occupants made them, to satisfy practical, cultural, and community needs and values. Vernacular architecture has influenced professional architects and indeed was the inspiration behind European and US arts and crafts* revivals* of the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it has generally been studied separately from polite or monumental architecture and has been seen as a branch of anthropology, construction history or social history. Yet, the majority of the world’s population live, work and worship in vernacular buildings. In places such as the Indian sub-continent these comprise some 95 per cent of the housing stock.3 Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1964) was a pioneering study of traditional architecture, and the title is revealing.
Gateshead Millennium Bridge, 2001, Wilkinson Eyre Associates
As industrialisation and urbanisation has accelerated throughout the world people have used discarded industrial materials as well as available natural materials to provide shelter. The vast shantytowns around such major cities as Rio de Janeiro or Mumbai and the ‘cardboard cities’ of older industrialised countries like the UK are also places where people live and are certainly part of the built environment. Speculatively built suburbs and mass-produced, system-built housing estates serviced with public, retail and leisure facilities as well as the metal sheds of industrial estates are also part of the built environment. In Learning From Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1972) Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour set out to show that ubiquitous commercial architecture was worthy of study by architects and urbanists. It represented a new type of urban form that needed to be understood if techniques for handling it were to evolve.
Because architecture is such a vast subject there have been many attempts to limit it, or to break it down into more manageable areas. Limiting the definition of architecture to polite or monumental works such as castles, palaces or cathedrals uses status as a way of defining the boundaries of the subject, and many of the older books adopted this stance. It has meant that those who wished to study other building types had to do so outside what was defined as architecture. Factory buildings were studied as industrial archaeology and as an aspect of labour and industrial history, railway stations as part of engineering and transport history, and steel-framed* buildings (such as skyscrapers) or iron and glass buildings (such as the Crystal Palace) as construction history. Grouping buildings according to their use, such as military, domestic, recreational, industrial or transport, is another way of subdividing the subject, as is grouping them according to the methods or materials of construction.
The role of the architect
Most of us would agree that the term ‘architecture’ includes the great medieval cathedrals that were built in western Europe, but there has been much debate over who had responsibility for their design and the status of that person. In the past some writers argued that the monks as builders and as patrons designed these cathedrals. Others stressed the role of the master masons and emphasised the mechanics of construction, particularly of large and complicated churches, so that the architect was seen in effect as a practising engineer. Another interpretation was to see the creation of cathedrals as the achievement of collectives of craftsmen contributing their individual skills and working cooperatively. Today historians recognise the important role of the higher clergy as patrons who, in consultation with the architects, determined the form of the cathedrals. Documentary evidence from the thirteenth century provides the names of such architects as: Jean d’Orbais and Bernard de Soissons who were two of the four architects who worked at Reims Cathedral; Henry of Reyns at Westminster Abbey, London; and William of Sens. Other evidence of the architect’s role can be seen in the relief sculpture at Worcester Cathedral which shows an architect with dividers and perhaps a monk, examining what may be an architectural drawing. Although the available evidence and historians’ interpretations may change we still appreciate these structures as architecture, whether or not an architect was involved.
There are great variations in the architect’s role. Since the late twentieth century, in some ‘design and build’ projects the work of the architect has declined to that of supplying outline drawings, the final detail being developed by the builder and developer during construction. Some architects may be little more than technicians or draughts people, while at the other end of the scale they may act as entrepreneurs and developers, particularly in the United States. A developer raises capital, acquires and assembles the site, hires a development team and when the project is complete either sells or rents the building, often at a considerable profit. Architects in this role tend to be more like business managers. The competition to design the buildings to replace the World Trade Center, New York was won in 2003 by the architect Daniel Libeskind. However, it is by no means certain that he will retain control over what is finally built as the decisions on this rest with the developers and financiers.
Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 1632–47
The counterpart to the heroic architect is the heroic building, presented as an individual star. If a sufficient number of publications focus on the same buildings then the quantity and variety of other good architecture will tend to be undervalued. The process becomes self-reinforcing and difficult to alter. With sufficient exposure to this approach there is a danger that we almost cease to see the building concerned. The Eiffel Tower is so closely linked in our minds with Paris that we cease to think about it as a structure built for a particular purpose and greeted with outrage initially. The Sydney Opera House, Australia, which was completed by Ove Arup in 1972, six years after its architect Jørn Utzon left the project, was voted one of the wonders of the twentieth century by readers of the London Times Saturday Review. It remains one of Australia’s most potent symbols. Tower Bridge in London and the Taj Mahal in Agra, Central India, are other examples of cultural monuments that have become isolated from the context in which they developed. When we, the authors, visited the Taj Mahal we felt we were so familiar with its image that the reality would have little impact on us. We were quite unprepared for its striking beauty and tranquil setting. We tend to view these cultural monuments uncritically and yet accept the strength of their symbolism.
Sydney Opera House, Australia, 1972 ( Jørn Utzon and Ove Arup)
The concept of heroic buildings has been taken a step further with the development, at the end of the twentieth century, of the iconic building as a means of cultural and economic regeneration and the promotion of tourism. So successful was Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, 1999, in the regeneration of Bilbao, Spain, that the phrase ‘doing a Guggenheim’ or ‘doing a Bilbao’ has entered the planners’ language. The Guggenheim was, however, not the only new building to grace Bilbao. It was accompanied by a new airport by Santiago Calatrava who also built a footbridge over the Nervión River and there is a new transport network with station entrances by Norman Foster and Partners. The fact that Bilbao also has an important history with buildings by major architects was for a while over whelmed by the emphasis on the new. The idea of heroic or notable buildings is in one sense obvious, for some buildings do stand out more than others. Lewis Mumford in his important book The City in History (London, Secker & Warburg, 1961) argued that cities always reflect the societies that built them. The buildings that dominated a medieval city, the church and the castle, reflected the power structure of society at that time. The major buildings in renaissance and baroque cities similarly reflected the power of church, state and royalty. Today it is commerce and banking which predominate, and the commercial skyscrapers that dominate the skyline of major cities underline this. Although heroic architecture visually reinforces the power structure in any period, this does not mean that we should concentrate our attention solely on it. To do so, or to apply a star system to architecture, would result in a very partial view of our subject, comparable in effect to restricting the study of history to that of kings and queens and the dominant hierarchy.
One of the most extensive surveys of notable buildings ever undertaken anywhere is the 46-volume Buildings of England series undertaken by Nikolaus Pevsner, which took 45 years to complete. Pevsner and his assistants did not restrict themselves only to obviously notable buildings such as churches and palaces, but they nevertheless had to evolve criteria to enable them to decide which buildings to include and which to omit. Bridget Cherry and her team had to make similar decisions about what to include and what to omit when resurveying UK buildings for revised editions.
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1999 (Frank Gehry)
The key buildings that form what we call heroic architecture are only a small part of our built environment, as are the works of heroic architects. Heroic architects have not designed most of the built environment and clearly a view of architecture that ignores where the vast majority of people live, work and play would be extraordinarily limited. If we want to try to understand architecture and the built environment generally, then we need to begin to determine what is significant and what is not. For most of us, where we live is very important, yet unless we live in a palace or in a house designed by a major architect, the heroic approach would not see this as a suitable topic.
The issue of taste
Often we are drawn into studying architecture because we have strong feelings about our environment and about what we like and dislike, but our opinions change over time as the example of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, illustrated. When the National Theatre (Denys Lasdun) opened in London in 1975, it was thought by critics to be possibly the greatest modern building in Britain. Some fifteen years later Prince Charles thought it was ‘a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting’.
National Theatre, London, 1975 (Denys Lasdun)
We all have our preferences and prejudices in architecture as in anything else and our experiences determine our attitude. All of us are different, but it is important not to draw historical conclusions from personal likes and dislikes. Because we do not like a particular building style, it does not mean that that style was not historically important, or that the architects involved in producing such work were totally mistaken in their aims. In the midnineteenth century the ‘Battle of the Styles’ was a topic that occupied many of the foremost architects and critics of the day. It was exemplified in the UK by the debate about style for the government’s new Foreign Office in London. The Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, argued for a classical design and rejected the winning designs of a competition held in 1856 that had been inspired by the new Louvre in Paris. The Tories, who held power briefly during 1858 when the commission for the building was still under debate, preferred gothic. The architect George Gilbert Scott, who had come third in the original competition, promoted high Victorian gothic through his book, Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, Present and Future, 1857. Determined to win the commission, Scott reluctantly produced a renaissance-style design, which was built 1862 73.13 His opportunity for high Victorian gothic soon came and at the Midland Grand Hotel (1868–74), fronting the most spectacular of the London railway termini, St Pancras, Scott designed a memorable building. More recently, in the 1960s, many architects, architectural critics, writers and historians were against historical styles and in particular any form of Victorian architecture.
Richmond Riverside, Surrey, 1988 (Quinlan Terry)
Their preference was for modernism. By the 1980s taste had changed and modernism in turn had fallen out of favour. Indeed, when local citizens were given the opportunity to vote on rival plans for Richmond Riverside, west of London, Quinlan Terry’s classical design (1988) was three times more popular than the modernist alternative.
Architectural terminology
If we are to understand buildings and communicate our understanding to others we need to be able to identify particular details and give them their correct name. Learning architectural terminology is like learning a new language and unfortunately there are no short cuts. In this book we introduce terms as we need them and brief definitions are given in the glossary, which is not intended to be comprehensive. There are a number of architectural dictionaries, including illustrated ones that are particularly useful for acquiring the vocabulary necessary to discuss buildings in detail.
Tavistock Square, London, c.1780
Architectural terminology concerns the way in which architects and architectural critics discuss architecture in books. When we hear people discussing buildings that have ‘movement’, that have ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ characteristics, buildings that are ‘sick’ and buildings that ‘speak’, we may wonder if we do indeed speak the same language. Buildings that have movement may mean that they are suffering from subsidence, or are crumbling away, but when architects and architectural writers talk about a building having movement, they could mean something quite different. If we compare a Georgian exterior with a baroque one we see that the former has a façade that, although not flat, nevertheless presents an almost straight line to the street. The doors and windows are set back a little from the wall plane and the pilasters project slightly. Although the central three bays are emphasised by the four columns* which project forward more boldly, we read this long symmetrical façade as a single plane modulated by the regular vertical rhythms of the shallow openings and projecting central block with its giant orders. The rhythms or the regular spacing of openings and other features remind us of beats in music – the closer the spacing the faster the beats. In this terrace the rhythm appears perhaps as a brisk walk. It is in this way we may speak of movement in architecture. By comparison the baroque church appears as a dynamic threedimensional sculpture. The entrance façade almost ‘swings’. Two tiers of giant orders mark the three bays. At ground level a central convex curve is framed by concave curves that are reflected, but not exactly repeated, above.
Here regularity is replaced by variety and elaborate carved stonework that casts dark shadows. There are deeply carved entablatures, sculpture, a balustrade, and a variety of openings set within aedicules. These varied forms and undulations give the whole façade movement. Inside, the walls undulate around the worship space, rising to an oval-shaped dome with lantern above, which we can just see on the exterior behind the parapet.
Meaning and metaphor
We experience buildings in terms of their form, their structure, their aesthetics and our use of them. This constitutes the reality of our physical experience, but buildings exist not only in reality but also metaphorically. They express meaning and give certain messages, just as the way we dress or furnish our homes gives messages about us.
Chicago Tribune Tower, competition entry, 1922 (Adolf Loos)
When Adolf Loos entered the competition for a building to house the offices of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, his design took the form of a column, a pun on the idea of a newspaper column. The dramatic rooflines of the Sydney Opera House look like seashells or sails. Its physical form, in other words, seems to refer both literally and symbolically to its maritime position and to the sailing boats in Sydney Harbour. However, the architect may have drawn upon a far wider range of experiences. Jørn Utzon had travelled widely and absorbed many influences including the ruins of the ancient Zapotec capital built on to terraced platforms on Monte Albán in Mexico, oriental temples, the structure of birds’ wings and even clouds floating above the horizon. All of these may have informed his design.
Robie House, Chicago, 1909 (Frank Lloyd Wright)
Buildings are central to our need for shelter and security and they symbolise aspects of these needs in their form. A house not only provides shelter and warmth, it also symbolises home on a very deep level. A young English child drawing a house will characterise it very simply, with a pitched roof and maybe a door and windows. In the north European climate the pitched roof evolved because this was the form that shed rain and snow most effectively. This form came to symbolise shelter, just as the chimney came to symbolise the existence of warmth. Together their message is home. Many architects have exploited this symbolism in their work, among them Frank Lloyd Wright. In his prairie houses of the early twentieth century, the dominant features were the centrally placed hearth and chimney, symbolising the heart of the home and the dramatic roofs with large overhanging eaves symbolising shelter.
Jewish Museum, Berlin, 1989–98 (Daniel Libeskind)
Daniel Libeskind sprang to fame partly as a result of two completed buildings, the Jewish Museum, Berlin, 1989–98, and the Imperial War Museum North, Salford, 2002. What these buildings share with his designs for the World Trade Center site is the ability to communicate: each has a narrative. The Jewish Museum is part museum and part monument. Lines connecting the points in Berlin where Jews lived and the broken Star of David are among the symbolic references that generated the fractured, zigzag forms and slit openings in the walls. At its heart is a tall void, the Holocaust Tower, a narrow, dark grey, triangular space some three storeys high, very quiet, with no sound from the world outside, dimly lit from a vertical strip window at the top of the apex of the triangle. This powerful, frightening space dramatises and symbolises absence, evoking the memory of those millions of Jews killed in the Second World War.
Connell, Ward and Lucas, 66 Frognal, London, 1938
Architecture today
The whole subject of architecture is acquiring a thorough overhaul as a result of current concerns for today and for the future. Its content and the approaches to it are being widened, as we explore in later chapters. Today we accept that it is just as valid to examine an industrial structure such as a gasholder as it is to examine castles, cathedrals and dwellings of all types.
Gasholder, Battersea, London, c.1880
Architecture affects everyone and so we all need to take responsibility for it, but we can only do so when we understand more about it. Architecture is something to be enjoyed and shared. If it is shared more widely as more people understand it, then the chances are that the urban environment will improve and architects will no longer be seen as responsible for all that we dislike in it, but as part of a team which enables us to achieve our ideals.
⇠⇠Architecture and building⇢⇢
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