What price icons in a heritage world?

Architectural Review, The, June, 2005 by Paul Finch

Are contemporary 'icon' buildings, particularly tall ones, to be excluded from the increasing number of cities with World Heritage Sites within them? A UNESCO conference, on the dilemmas created by the skyscraper manifestations of globalised commerce and culture, was triggered by the three-tower proposal for Vienna, the 'Wien-Mitte' project, two years ago; appropriately enough the conference took place in the same city last month (May), and addressed how, given demands for large new buildings of all types from users and investors alike, areas of historic interest and character can remain uncompromised. As a preamble document put it, 'What are the limits of acceptable change and what criteria should be applied for evaluation and assessment?'

This debate is particularly appropriate in the context of the continuing debate over the value of so-called icon buildings (they used to be called landmarks), fuelled by two new books from the critics Charles Jencks (1) and Deyan Sudjic (2). Jencks argues that the desire for icon buildings is inevitable and that instead of resisting it, commissions should become the occasion for much more seriously considered artworks, related to a greater or lesser extent to underlying design principles and geometries found in nature. He has identified key icons which fit this bill, and analysed them in his usual provocative fashion, a cheerleader for a roll-call of many of the great and the good from the world of architecture. Sudjic is much more sceptical. In a brilliant opening chapter he reminds us of quite another roll-call--of eminent architects who lined up to work for Hitler, some of them doubling up with Stalin. The underlying proposition is the desire on the part of the rich and powerful to commemorate, celebrate and/or distort their achievements through architecture.

Architects generally find the prospect of building more appealing than not, reconciling conflicting demands of clients, planning authorities, heritage bodies, users and so on. However, this task cannot be undertaken in a vacuum where attitudes to the history and culture of place are unclear or non-existent. As ever, balance is required between new and old. Unesco's debate was timely, and not necessarily hostile to modernity. That is just as well. The underlying tradition of many cities is to build for their own time, sometimes as a result of political or military decisions we would find unacceptable today. If heritage is about more than built form, then the histories to which Sudjic refers need to be taken into account.

1 Iconic Building: The Power of Enigma (Frances Lincoln, 2005).

2 The Edifice Complex (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2005).