Six themes for the next millenium

Architectural Review, The, July, 1994 by Juhani Pallasmaa

In an age when many seem to have abandoned hope in architecture or its potential for enobling mankind, this essay proposes that our discipline, properly understood, can offer many subtle possibilities for bettering the lot of humanity. The article is based on the Herman Miller Lecture given at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London earlier this year. 'There is a widely shared sense that Western ways of seeing, knowing and representing have irreversibly altered in recent times; but there is little consensus over what this might mean or what direction Western culture is now taking,' writes Jon R. Snyder in his introduction to Gianni Vattimo's seminal philosophical investigation of our age, entitled The End of Modernity.(1) The emerging new horizon, or perhaps more correctly, the disappearance of a horizon altogether, seems to annihilate the ground of the ideals and aspirations of Modernity. The view of the world and the mission of architecture that had appeared unquestionably grounded in concepts of truth and ethics, as well as in a social vision and commitment, have shattered, and the sense of purpose and order has faded away. It is revealing of our age that the architectural avant-garde of today has all but abandoned the issues of planning, housing, mass production and industrialisation, which were all central challenges of modernity.

Why is it that architecture seems to turn away from social reality and become self-referential and self-motivated? Why are narcissism and self-indulgence replacing empathy and social conscience?

The idea of totality which is central for the thinking of modernity, and the accompanying notions of an era and of progress have lost their validity; it is no longer possible to understand reality through a single conceptual construction or representation. Towards the end of our millennium, universal history has become impossible as history has disintegrated into a multitude of alternative heterogeneous histories, and simultaneously the perspective of redemption has vanished. The great prospect of redemption brought about by Modern architecture, as narrated by Siegfried Giedion and others, has also lost its credibility and, as a consequence, a 'multitude of suppressed alternative histories are being unveiled from the shadow of the pathetic story of the emancipation of architecture'.

'For some time now there has been an extraordinary receptiveness to theory, more especially to philosophy, in the architectural community,' writes Karsten Harries.(2) 'That fact invites thoughtful consideration ... One thing the widespread interest in philosophy that has become so much part of the post-modern architectural scheme suggests is that architecture has become uncertain of its way.'

The bewildering interest in theorising and verbal explanation of architectural meanings and intentions today reveals an uncertainty of the role and essence of architecture. Architecture is nervously seeking its self-definition and autonomy in the embrace of the culture of consumption, which tends to turn it into a commodity and entertainment.

Truly disturbing buildings today, that barely hide their attachment to nihilism and mental violence, are viewed and accepted as manifestations of a new aesthetic sensibility. The all-approving ideology of consumption accepts and exploits any aesthetic or moral diversion, before it can create a sufficient critical distance to function as an authentic opposition. The post-historical condition has annihilated the possibility of a true avant garde.

A growing entangling of the arts and their philosophical foundations has been apparent since the 1960s and this development is also reflected in the current tendency of architecture to become increasingly identified with its own theory and rationalisation. Art has turned away from the task of representing reality to survey the problem of representation itself, and to the essence of its particular medium. The disappearance of stable ground has forced art at large into critical negativity, an attempt to define its territory through negation and denial. The logocentrism of today's architecture also reflects a loss of innocence; the tacit practice of architecture within the continuum of architectural culture has turned into a conscious intellectual fabrication. And the obsession for originality has eliminated the possibility of cumulative knowledge.

I believe that we can understand the current uncertainties of architecture more clearly if we are able to see the cultural condition that we live in at the end of our millennium. This could enable us to grasp why 'the horoscope of architecture' does not look good, as Alvar Aalto prophesied as early as 1958.

The central theme in the Modernist architectural theory was the representation of the space-time continuum. Architecture was seen as a representation of the world view and an expression of the space-time structure of the physical and experiential reality. The space-time dimension is, of course, central in all ideas and activities of the humankind from the hidden geometries of language to forms of production and politics. An analysis of the post-historical time-space experience brings us to the core of current frustrations in architectural representation.