The new paradigm in architecture - Theory

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003 by Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks suggests culture is transforming itself from the simple certainties of Modernism to a much more complex interpretation of reality based on biology, mathematics and cosmology. Architecture is responding.

A change of heart, a new vision for architecture? If there really is a new paradigm in architecture then it will reflect changes in science, religion and politics and it doesn't take a clairvoyant to see that George Bush & Junta (as Gore Vidal calls them) are very much locked into a medieval world view (if that isn't an insult to the Gothic). No, the reigning disciplines are struggling with primitive orientations and will continue to do so until one catastrophe or another (global, ecological?) forces them to shift gears, there is no widespread cultural movement under way. Nevertheless, one can discern the beginnings of a shift in architecture that relates to a deep transformation going on in the sciences and in time, I believe, this will permeate all other areas of life. The new sciences of complexity -- fractals, nonlinear dynamics, the new cosmology, self-organizing systems -- have brought about the change in perspective. We have moved from a mechanistic view of the universe to one that is self-organizing a t all levels, from the atom to the galaxy. Illuminated by the computer, this new world view is paralleled by changes now occurring in architecture.

Several key buildings show its promise -- those by Americans Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Libeskind. There is also a vast amount of other work on the edge of the new paradigm by the Dutch architects Rem Koolhaas, Ben van Berkel and MVRDV, or other Europeans like Santiago Calatrava and Coop Himmelblau, or those who have moved on from High-Tech in England, such as Norman Foster. These architects, as well as those that flirted with Deconstruction -- Hadid, Moss, and Morphosis -- look set to take on the philosophy. In Australia, ARM (Ashton Raggatt MacDougall) has been mining the territory for many years and another group, LAB, is completing a seminal work of the new movement, Melbourne's Federation Square. Soon there will be enough buildings to see if all this is more than a fashion, or change of style, but it certainly is the latter.

The emergent grammar is constantly provoking. It varies from ungainly blobs to elegant waveforms, from jagged fractals to impersonal datascapes. It challenges the old languages of Classicism and Modernism with the idea that a new urban order is possible, one closer to the ever-varying patterns of nature. One may not like it at first, and be critical of its shortcomings, but on second glance it may turn out to be more interesting, more in tune with perception than the incessant repetition of colonnades and curtain walls.

The plurality of styles is a keynote. This reflects the underlying concern for the increasing pluralism of global cities. Growing out of postmodern complexity of the '60s and '70s (Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi), is the complexity theory of the 1980s, which forms the unifying idea, Pluralism leads to conflict, the inclusion of opposite tastes and composite goals, a melting and boiling pot. Modernist purity and reduction could not handle this reality very well. But the goals of the new paradigm are wider than the science and politics that supports it, or the computer that allows it to be conceived and built economically. This is the shift in world view that sees nature and culture as growing out of the narrative of the universe, a story that has only recently been sketched by the new cosmology in the last thirty years. In a global culture of conflict this narrative provides a possible direction and iconography that transcend national and sectarian interests.

Organi-Tech

To see what is at stake one might start with those at the edge of the new tradition and see how they differ from those closer to the centre. I would call them Organi-Tech architects because they reflect both their Modernist parents, the High-Tech architects who used to dominate Britain, and their grandparents, organic architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Hugo Haring who tried to parallel natural forms, Organi-Tech, like its twin 'Eco-Tech', straddles both sides of this duality; it continues an obsession with technology and structural expression while, at the same time, becoming more ecological. The contradictions this leads to, are openly admitted by Ken Yeang, who acknowledges that while the skyscraper is very un-ecological by nature it is hardly going to disappear as the corporate type of choice. So, like Foster, Piano and other Modernists, he aims to make them less environmentally costly. Richard Rogers is committed to this policy at the regional scale and currently making heroic attempts to change th e entropic urban trends of Britain. Other Organi-Tech designers produce surprising structural metaphors that celebrate the organic nature of structure, the bones, muscles and rippling skin of an athlete at full stretch. Both Nicholas Grimshaw and Santiago Calatrava have designed expressive skeletons meant to dazzle the eye, especially when the sun is out. (1) They are filigreed light-traps, or pulsating exoskeletons that show our bodily relation to other organisms. One cannot help being moved by these spectacular constructions even if their message often may be too obvious.