Feeding The Moloch: On Crisis, Speculation and Public Housing Renewal in Victoria

On Crisis

It is widely acknowledged that Australia, similar to many countries in both the Global North and Global South, is currently witnessing an acute ‘housing crisis’. However, the crisis in Australia has been building to a cataclysmic-like pressure point for the better part of two decades, arguably under the successive neglect of governments. As of July 2023, the situation seems dire; the national vacancy rate is 0.9%. The demand for affordable, accessible housing far outstrips supply in our capital cities and regions, and the twin spectres of inflation and stagnant wage growth further induce housing stress on all tenure groups. Australian housing prices are both overvalued and unaffordable. The ratio of house prices to incomes and rents in Australia is at the highest in OECD countries since 2003. By late 2021, Australia's median national house price to income ratio had ballooned to 12.1, compared to 5.1 in the UK and 5.0 in the US. This is despite both comparable Anglocentric countries suffering their unique housing crises. As many argue, an inability to access secure affordable housing is the main driver for inequality in Australia. At the same time, as the crisis worsens, the most significant intergenerational wealth transfer in the country's history shows signs of cementing a two-tier class-based status quo between those who can and cannot access housing.

Australia’s relationship with housing since colonisation has been deeply problematic. Longstanding colonial practices premised on terra nullius not only continually reject Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples epistemological perspective but actively engage in systematic erasure, displacement and dispossession of sovereign First Peoples' rights and connection to Country. By extension, the cadastral property system as a colonial invention has been the dominant tool by which the colonisation of Australia has been enacted, coupled with repeated ongoing violent enforcement of hegemonic power. Fundamentally, how property is framed as part of the settler myth-making of ‘Australia’ continues to reject ancient and enduring pre-settler systems of law and further disenfranchises First Peoples. It is a lamentable case in point that concerning the housing crisis, a 2022 AHURI report into Indigenous homelessness found the Indigenous homelessness rate is ten times that of non-Indigenous people, with one in 28 Indigenous people homeless at the time of the 2016 census. Furthermore, the report found that "a continuity of dispossession, racism, profound economic disadvantage and cultural oppression shapes the lived experience of many Indigenous Australians today". The 2021 Census found that 1 in 5 of those experiencing homelessness were Indigenous. Indigenous housing is a crisis-within-a-crisis and a long-existent symptom of the wider neo-colonialist housing policy setting we find in Australia. 

'DeFlat' Kleiburg, Amsterdam, NL by NL Architects + XVW Architectuur, 2011-2016. Photo: Marcel van der Burg.

Dismantling Public Housing Renewal

Decades of overtly neoliberal sympathetic and populist vote-buying public policy have created the perfect storm in the form of a perpetually propped-up speculative housing bubble. In what we might consider civil society, long gone are the utopian Menzies-era ideals of housing for all as espoused by the embedded liberalism of the Keynesian post-war period. Construction of new public housing dwellings is currently at its lowest rate in over 40 years. Existing public housing stock is chronically underfunded and endures an ongoing excruciating demise. In the Australian context, the legacy of ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’ continues to reverberate in policy-making echo chambers. At the same time, there are concerted and ongoing efforts by state governments to shed direct responsibility for public housing through privatisation and aggressive asset transfers under the guise of ‘public housing urban renewal’ programs. Championed by advocacy coalitions comprising (but not limited to) state governments, private developers and more recently, not-for-profit Community Housing Providers (CHPs).

In Victoria, renewal programs such as the Public Housing Renewal Program (PHRP), in particular, have been criticised as fundamentally flawed for several reasons. Examples including a project brief that is premised on the paternalistic presumption of the benefits of ‘social mix’. Colloquially referred to in the property industry as the ‘salt and pepper’ approach to social housing. The non-evidence-supported strategy of co-locating social housing tenants with their ‘better off’ private market renter/owners aims to achieve social capital transfer and foster a ‘community’ amongst different socio-economic demographics. Critically, we must analyse ‘social mix’ agendas against the problematic yet dominant historical backdrop of Antipodean assimilation and forced Anglo-Saxon homogeneity. Regarding functionality and programme, despite PHRP projects seeking to ‘renew’ public housing stocks, there is a lack of demonstrated significant improvements to housing stocks. For example, the Victorian ‘Big Build’ housing projects that fall under the PHRP program generally mandate a minimum 10% increase in social dwelling numbers yet result in an overall reduction in the total number of beds per dwelling compared to existing demolished project stock. In this example, adding additional private ‘market’ rental stock or the inclusion of the minimal number of ‘affordable’ dwellings as part of the overall project does little to offset the demolition of existing public housing stock, the fracturing of existing communities and displacement of residents (regardless of their ‘rights of return’) once the projects are completed, to say nothing of the significant sustainability concerns such tabula rasa methods employ.

Transformation of 530 dwellings, Block G, H, I, Grand Parc Estate, Bordeaux, France by Lacaton & Vassal, 2017.
Photo: Philippe Ruault.

Contemporary States of Speculation

The state itself, as the principal actor in the housing space, has more incentive to maintain political and economic order than try to solve the ongoing crisis, evidenced most recently by the lack of substantive policy in the recent 2023-2024 Federal and Victorian State budgets. Despite the historical performance of the initial Commonwealth-State Housing Agreements (CSHA), consider, for example, that the first 10-year CSHA was able to build nearly 100,000 public housing dwellings between 1945-1955 alone. There seems little appetite to revive the commonwealth's role in affordable housing delivery. The only signature federal policy is the nebulous $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) with the somewhat opaque goal to “fund acute housing needs on an ongoing basis” and build 30,000 new social and affordable housing in its first five years, albeit with the caveat that expenditure is dependent on the fund itself making returns, essentially taking a wager on the ASX and continued economic growth. Even at the level of federal public policy, actions seem entirely couched in the notion of Australia as the ‘lucky country’, despite the housing crisis in Australia as an exemplar of free market failure in providing a basic necessity; the human right to adequate housing, for the Federal government it’s a case in point of a better tomorrow, tomorrow. 

With recent discussion of the housing crisis showing no sign of exiting the news cycle, National Cabinet has agreed to boost the 2022 National Housing Accord target from 1 to 1.2 million new homes for the period 2024-2029. At the same time, National Cabinet has flagged a ‘National Planning Reform Blueprint’, targeting what it sees as dysfunction in local and state planning policies. When the political messaging of a complex issue is simplified to ‘insufficient supply’ and ‘bureaucratic red tape’, panacea solutions seem to have rational appeal, yet only time will tell how this will be achieved without a tangible and nuanced delivery pathway. Finally, moves by the National cabinet to strengthen tenancy laws would be a positive signal if those laws weren’t already legislated in most states, becoming, at worst, a cost-free quick political win for the Federal government and, a best, a PR mechanism to help build appeal for the emerging Build To Rent (BTR) sector tied so heavily to domestic and international institutional wealth.  

The resulting instability of a developed economy continually relying so heavily on its property sector creates a situation where speculative property ownership (thinly masked under the auspices of “the great Australian dream”) creates a “too big to fail” relationship between homeowners, financial institutes and elected governments. This is even though homeownership rates are in decline, having peaked between the 1940s-70s and having slumped to 67.1% in recent years. We see the ongoing demonisation of other tenure models such as private renting or social renting in lieu of the lavishly praised ‘home owner’, here ‘Howards Battlers’ are lionised whilst those who find themselves long-term renters (regardless of demographic) are considered abject failures, those trying to access social housing; particularly public housing are stigmatised as ‘less than’. The 'Hegemony of tenure' prioritises homeowners in policy-making, portraying home ownership as moralistically superior and housing as a speculative asset rather than a basic human need or infrastructure. The ‘reverse welfarism’ of Australian housing policy undermines legitimate attempts to de-escalate the crisis and continues to privilege the landlord class while sacrificing society.

In contrast, it would be helpful to consider the different perceptions of Viennese housing policy. In the Austrian context, 40% of houses are of rental tenure. In what has come to be labelled the ‘affordable housing Mecca’ of Vienna, this number rises to an incredible 80% of dwellings in rental tenure. This is backed not just by one of the world's largest public (and affordability-regulated) rental housing systems but a local policy and media setting where the rights of rental tenure are at the forefront of political debate and enshrined in law.

The vast majority of Australians (even long term-renters) have been coaxed to view housing as a speculative asset (a non-productive one at that) rather than to conceptualise housing as a fundamental right for all. Richard Denniss, economist and director of The Australia Institute, applies the useful metaphor of the current housing crisis as a kind of ‘Kabuki Theatre’, in particular reference to the recent push in Governmental language for ‘making housing affordable’. It may seem reductionist, but the fundamental core issue in the Australian housing crisis is not a total lack of supply; instead, house prices are simply too high. If public policy isn’t making prices fall, then those policies can’t make things more affordable. What could be more Helleresque?

Property ownership here, particularly in our charged media landscape, is not framed as ‘building a home’ as much as a rush to ‘get on the property ladder’ that paradoxically only lets you ascend the rungs, less the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Here to quote researcher Chris Martin of UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, the property investor is cast as the self-made ‘clever Odysseus’ who achieves self-realisation and ‘financial freedom’ by harnessing the transformative leverage of property ownership. The hegemony of this discourse cannot be dissuaded. It permeates throughout any housing conversation. Those without the social, financial or cultural capital to enter the housing market are stigmatised, at best, patronised as ‘uninformed’ youths or those who ‘missed the boat’ of favourable financial conditions. At worst, paternalistically as ‘undeserving’ of adequate housing due to their perceived individual moral failings; vocally, these might be expressed along classist lines of employment, education or welfare reliance. More insidious biases quietly voiced abound along racist, sexist, ableist or ageist lines.

The culture of home ownership in Australia is both manufactured and politically expedient. To malaprop an idiom, the best time to buy a home was thirty years ago. The next best time is today. For many, the family home (safely not included in current aged pension asset tests) is considered the quintessential Australian retirement nest egg. When the time comes to leave this mortal coil, this asset class becomes the primary driver of the intergenerational transfer of wealth. Here we see the antithesis of the Chinese proverb, “One generation plants the trees, and another gets the shade.” Sexual morality and ascetic aspirations aside, we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that the Catholic church introduced clerical celibacy laws in response to the potential for the concentration of wealth in the form of ecclesiastical property being passed down clerical lineages. As impolite as it may be to say out loud, the corrosive and divisive nature of this en-masse intergenerational transfer of wealth cannot be understated, and is in itself a serious threat to a better future for Australia. 

The Speculative and/or Ethical Architect

There is a secondary ethical crisis for architects and other design professionals involved directly in providing housing (affordable, social, speculative or other). Are our professional and personal actions directly contributing to and exacerbating the crisis? Manfredo Tafuri's comments related to the Progetto di crisis seem relevant once more:

“Utopias don’t exist anymore. Engaged architecture, which I tried to make politically and socially involved, is over. Now the only thing one can do is empty architecture. Today, architects are forced into either being a star or being a nobody. For me, this isn’t really the “failure of modern architecture”; instead, we have to look to what architects could do when certain things weren’t possible and when they were.”

Indeed, it isn’t good enough to merely greenwash our latest architectural projects in a vain attempt to win accolades whilst ignoring the underlying instrumentalism of our professions to capitalism's corrosive social effects. Suppose architecture has completely surrendered itself to the post-political, as some have argued, might there be any minor redemption arc for the discipline, particularly in the Australian context and in light of the ever-worsening crisis? Is there a space for architects to more critically assess and actively advocate for housing policy reform? Here I am reminded of the lamentable recent anecdote of a senior public servant (and former architect) commenting there was “no role for politics in architectural work”, eviscerating their credibility as a prominent paid advocate in both spheres of work.

Arguably, Australia (and Victoria in particular) indeed has a rich legacy of architects attempting to ‘make political’ issues relating to housing, be it Robin Boyd's twin aesthetic/Australian ethos critique of the banalities of suburbia in The Great Australian Ugliness (1960) or his work with the Small Homes Service (1947-1953), which sought to advocate for the common good through the delivery of modest, environmentally sensitive, affordable and accessible home designs. Another example would be prolific Architectural historian Miles Lewis’ prominent advocacy role concerning the Carlton Urban Renewal Scheme (1972) and ongoing participation with other so-called ‘trendies’ in community opposition to inner and middle suburban development they deemed contextually destructive. With architect Maggie Edmonds there is the example of her RAIA-endorsed alternative plan to the Brooks Crescent redevelopment, which sought preservation, rehabilitation of houses, building new dwellings and inclusion of community facilities such as a kindergarten and creche (what Delores Hayden might call a more care-driven approach) to show that retention and renovation of existing housing stock was not only possible but provided for a desirable alternative way forward. 

St Georges Road Infill Housing. Photo: Gregory Burgess.

We should reflect on Architect John Devenish's experimentative work heading the Victorian Ministry of Housing infill housing program (1982-1985), which sought to purchase existing housing stock and, through local architectural practices, restore them in an urban contextually sensitive manner, directly attempting to address the bubbling social stigma attached to social housing and public housing bodies. Even if this was tied directly to the Ministry's institutional renewal and repositioning of Public Housing as a temporary stepping stone to home ownership, an essential talking point to the eventual dismantling of public housing.  The program’s distinctly postmodern approach is directly inspired by the successful efforts of the Berlin Internationale Bauausstellung IBA (1979-1989).

In more recent years, we’ve seen the Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA) run a series of design competitions and pilot projects (Living Places, Habitat 21 and Future Homes) seeking to present alternative housing strategies and provide a platform for professional discourse in light of the ongoing broader housing market failure. Finally, there is OFFICE, a not-for-profit design and research practice that proposed an alternative ‘Retain, Repair, Reinvest’ model for the Ascot Vale Estate and Barak Beacon Estate. The latter now sadly demolished under the previously discussed State governments Public Housing Renewal Program (PHRP) despite public protest and occupation of the site reminiscent of the 2016 Bendigo Street housing dispute. 

Replicable apartment proposals by Design Strategy in collaboration with IncluDesign win Victoria’s Future Homes competition. The Future Homes Project © Design Strategy Architecture + IncluDesign, 2020.

The examples given here are few, but there are many more historical examples of practising architects (some memorialised, others forgotten in the local architectural canon) utilising their knowledge, skills and networks to facilitate positive change in the face of the emerging housing crisis. The solutions to the housing crisis itself are not unknown. Particularly in the last decade or so, there has been an extensive academic focus on the emergence of the nature of the crisis and pathways toward fundamental change. See, for example, the Transforming Housing Project (2014-15), which outlined several policy, investment and demonstration projects supported by a litany of research and case studies or the recently published Housing Policy in Australia: A Case for System Reform (2020) which outlines the historic policy setting which has fueled the crisis along with significant commentary for potential systematic overhaul. The potential for this plethora of earnest and, importantly, evidence-based policy reforms is stymied by a lack of political will. If this cannot be successfully challenged, how can we achieve a future housing condition predicated on equity, intensity and densification of our cities?

Despite repeated calls for reform by policy advocates, little has been done to unwind the overheated speculative nature of Australia’s institutionalised housing sector.  There seems to be a dwindling of architectural conviction in confronting the speculation fueling the housing crisis in recent years, both in action and advocacy discourse. Could this reflect the privileged position of the Australian architectural industry's dominant voices? For many industry luminaries, the conditions behind Australia’s housing crisis have benefited them, as they have turned their architectural savvy and social capital into capital accumulation and, by extension, increased wealth and clout. 

If architecture itself is indeed post-political, as some suggest, then does that reduce the profession's force majeure role to merely myopic aesthetic criticism?  Architecture as a profession has a long tradition of identifying with our patron clients while distancing ourselves from those that cannot afford that same patronage, not to mention a torrid institutionalised legacy of exploitation within practice and the academy. In this respect, the architect's often classist position is not beyond scrutiny or reproach in the context of the ongoing and intensifying housing crisis. Is the limit of our civic engagement that we might sometimes seek to design a seemingly ‘democratic’ institution or public building, putting the literal facade of civility on chimaera-like neo-colonial institutions operating in previously discussed contested settler spaces? Is the future of architecture as a profession in regard to the Australian housing crisis just the ongoing proliferation of Tafuri’s ‘empty architecture’, or can we find a way back to contributing to that quasi-utopian ideal of politically and socially ‘engaged’ architecture that supplants the current ‘Kabuki Theatre’ of crisis? 

• Referenced Works

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  Benson, Eleanor, Morgan Brigg, Ke Hu, Sarah Maddison, Alexia Makras, Nikki Moodie, and Elizabeth Strakosch. “Mapping the Spatial Politics of Australian Settler Colonialism.” Political Geography 102 (April 2023): 102855.

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  Burke, Terry, Christian Nygaard, and Liss Ralston. “Australian Home Ownership: Past Reflections, Future Directions.” AHURI Final Report. April 2021: 58-63.

  Burns, Karen, and Paul Walker. “Publicly Postmodern: Media, Image and the New Social Housing Institution in 1980s Melbourne.” In Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 32, Architecture, Institutions and Change, 68-81. Sydney: SAHANZ, 2015.

  Capp, Ruby, Libby Porter, and David Kelly. “Re-Scaling Social Mix: Public Housing Renewal in Melbourne.” Journal of Urban Affairs 44, no. 3 (2022): 380–96.

  Chong, Fenneen. “Housing Price and Interest Rate Hike: A Tale of Five Cities in Australia.” Journal of Risk and Financial Management 16, no. 2 (2023): 61.

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  Daley, John, Brenan Coates, and Trent Wiltshire. “Housing Affordability: Re-Imagining the Australian Dream.” 2018.

  Frazee, Charles A. “The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church.” Church History 57 (1988): 108.

  Groenhart, Lucy, and Terry Burke. “Thirty Years of Public Housing Supply and Consumption: 1981– 2011.” AHURI Final Report no. 231. Melbourne: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, 2014.

  Gurran, Nicole, and Peter Phibbs. “Are Governments Really Interested in Fixing the Housing Problem? Policy Capture and Busy Work in Australia.” Housing Studies 30, no. 5 (2015): 711–29.

  Hall, Bianca. “‘They’ll Have to Carry Me out’: The Residents Fighting to Save Their Public Housing Estate.” The Age. March 19, 2023.

  Hansen, Amelia. “Exploring the Shortage of Specialist Disability Accommodation in Australia.” Maple Services. March 1, 2023.

  Hayden, Dolores. “What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work.” Signs 5, no. 3 (1980): 170–87.

  Hyde, Rory. “What Would Boyd Do?: A Small Homes Service for Today.” Architecture Australia 3, no. 107 (2018): 71–73.

  Kolovos, Benita. “Victoria’s Social Housing Stock Grows by Just 74 Dwellings in Four Years Despite Huge Waiting List.” The Guardian. March 16, 2023.

  Langton, Marcia. “Law: The Way of the Ancestors.” January 2023: 16-21.

  Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee (Vic). Inquiry into the Public Housing Renewal Program: Report. Melbourne: Parliament of Victoria, June 5, 2018. https://apo.org.au/node/175096.

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  Peverini, Marco. “Grounding Urban Governance on Housing Affordability: A Conceptual Framework for Policy Analysis Insights from Vienna.” Partecipazione e Conflitto 14, no. 2 (2021): 848–69.

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Available in Inflection Vol. 10 “Housing”

This paper explores the "feeding of the Moloch" that is the housing crisis in Australia. It argues that the crisis is the result of decades of neoliberal policies, speculation, and the dismantling of public housing. The paper examines the Victorian government's Public Housing Renewal Program (PHRP) and critiques it for its lack of evidence based policy, focus on social mix, and failure to address the crisis. Additionally, the paper critiques the speculative nature of the housing market and the government's inaction. It concludes by calling for architects to take action and contribute to solving the crisis.

An Exploration of Architectural Temporality

“What is time? A secret — insubstantial and omnipotent? A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space? But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both “ripens” and “brings forth.” And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there — for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation — for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. . . . Hans Castorp turned these sorts of questions over and over in his own mind.”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, p. 339. 1

Philosophies of Time

“What, then, is time? If nobody asks me, I know; 

St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XI. 2

There is perhaps no quote more relevant than St. Augustine’s when commencing the task of trying to understand or even simply define what exactly ‘time’ is. As finite creatures we take for granted its omnipresence in all aspects of life and tend to ignore the somewhat abstract concept where possible. In a simplistic way we may accept that time refers to the procession (ostensibly irreversible) of one event after another in a seemingly infinite succession of change. Time becomes the absolute condition which all events are part of as comparison to the subjectivation of time which is the creation of memory. That such an intangible infinity permeates all aspects of our perceived reality is such a powerful concept that it has enticed philosophic inquiry since antiquity, the curious mind seeks what it does not know; by extension we can never really ‘know’ time. The task of trying to understand time has led to an ever-complex bifurcation of enquiry and differing ideas that cast a long shadow on the development of culture, religion and scientific endeavour.

To butcher a Donald Rumsfeld quote, we can see how it may fall to the realm of the philosopher to try to know the known unknown of time. As with most concepts explored (and constrained) in Western philosophy, the long arrow of history can trace ideations on time back to the Athenian schools. Of great interest and debate to the Greeks was the ‘Paradox of Time’ put forward by Zeno of Elea which related the change inherent in time to the illusion of motion, a claim strongly refuted in Aristotle’s Physics (350 B.C.E.). Aristotle directly differentiates between ‘movement’ and ‘change’ and gives his definition of time as: “The measure of change with respect to before and after.”3

Jumping forward almost two millennia to what we might consider the ‘modern’ hegemonic cannon of philosophical temporal inquiry, we see Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) time comes to occupy a similar definition as that of space, with space being the pure form of ‘external intuition’ and time coming to be the universal condition of both immediate internal and mediate external phenomenon.4  

In Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) the nature of time is inherently existential and directly relates to the finite human. In this way time for Heidegger is the measure of what can be done by man regarding this finitude. Heidegger goes to lengths to show that time is always a directed concept, as is ‘it is time for’. To ‘dwell’ in time for Heidegger is to confront the finitude of existence.5  With Freud, as is almost always the case, the unconscious is defined by a notion of ‘timelessness’. The relation between Freuds ‘psychic apparatus’ of the unconscious, preconscious, conscious and topographic see time as the record of transportation or ‘registration’ of one notion from one system to another.6

Deleuze and Guattari see philosophical time in a ‘straitigraphic ’ sense, with before/after forming an order of superimposition on what they call ‘the plane of immanence’ which puts it in conflict with their notion of scientific time, that is, the bifurcating notion of scientific progress in a sequential order.7 The relationship between ‘time’ and ‘history’ is an equally nebulous topic as American art historian George Kubler summarises:

“Without change there is no history; without regularity there is no time. Time and history are related as rule and variation: time is the regular setting for the vagaries of history.” 8

British anthropologist Tim Ingold counters this: 

“Let me begin, once again, by stating what temporality is not. It is not chronology (as opposed to history), and it is not history (as opposed to chronology). By chronology, I mean any regular system of dated time intervals, in which events are said to have taken place. By history, I mean any series of events which may be dated in time according to their occurrence in one or  another chronological interval.” 9

The notion of the role of time with regards to modernity is of particular interest. Consider for instance American historian Lewis Mumford’s insistence within the seminal Technics and Civilization (1934) that the ushering in of modernity is directly tied to the invention of the clock and thus by extension the production of the ‘second and minute’ has become a quasi-tangible manifestation of time. This machine becomes the prototype which enables the creation of all machines to come to rely upon. For Mumford mankind:

“Could do without coal and iron and steam easier than it could do without the clock.” 10

In The Culture of Time and Space (1983), American historian Stephen Kern studies how the changes in thinking about abstract philosophical categories of time become manifested in a concrete historical situation. According to Kern:

“From around 1880 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of sweeping changes in technology and culture created distinctive new modes of thinking and experiencing time and space. Technological inventions including the telephone, wireless telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle, automobile, and airplane established the material foundation for this reorientation; independent cultural developments such as the stream-of consciousness novel, psychoanalysis, Cubism, and the theory of relativity shaped consciousness directly. The result was a transformation of the dimensions of life and thought.” 11 

Philosopher and architect Christian Hubert summarises this notion of history, modernity and time neatly:

“Modernity must be understood as an attitude about time, as a sense that the   present differs qualitatively from the past, and that the future is what counts.” 12

These are but a few different philosophies of time, some are interlinked, some in complete opposition and antithesis to one another. It is but a small spattering of the multitude of ideas and frameworks for ‘time’ put forward by some of the greatest thinkers of history. Not to even mention the evolving nature of ‘scientific’ time, from antiquity through to today. From the Greek notion regarding time as an illusion to Copernicus’s heliocentrism, Newtons reversible Newtonian time, Einstein’s relative time and even to current theories of unified space-time.

It is not wrong to say that the referenced philosophies are in the majority from a surface level reading of the canon of Western philosophy, however, with the global proliferation of the modernist movement from the 18th century onwards and concreted by the homogenised architectural ‘supermodernity’ in our 21st century age of perpetual crisis, this understanding of ‘temporality’ has come to be the hegemonic conceptual in the architectural discourse of time. Although increasingly an acceptance and exploration of epistemologies related to philosophies of time have opened up great avenues and departures from the assumptions and preconditions of Western philosophy, there is still a great and perpetual endeavour to be undertaken by philosophers and laymen alike in trying to understand the fundamental question: What is Time? 

On Kawara, ‘1966’, (1966)

Building Against Time

“Time conquers all things . . . all-conquering, all-ruining time….God help me, I sometimes cannot bear it..”

Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria 
(“on the Art of Building”), Book I.13 

An architect and theorist, Juhani Pallasmaa communicated in The Space of Time (1998) the overwhelming power that time has over us, and by extension our architecture:

“Time is the dimension of experience that is most frightening to us in its seemingly absolute power over us. We feel helpless in relation to time, and we find ourselves at its mercy. As human’s understanding of time lost its primordial cyclical nature, time became linear with an irrevocable beginning and end. We can shape matter and order space, but we cannot throw time of its predestined course. Human’s greatest desire, therefore, is to halt, suspend and reverse the flow of time. Architecture’s fundamental task, to provide us with our domicile in space, is recognized by most architects. However, the second task of architecture, to mediate human’s relation with the fleeting element of time, is usually disregarded.” 14

As with other phenomenologist practitioners Pallasmaa’s views on time and architecture are quickly read as humanist in nature. However, he hints that this second task, that of engaging with the nature of time and its relationship with both the human and their architecture is something which is not eagerly embraced or addressed by architects. The exaltation of an architecture that embraces duration and change is identified by Pallasmaa as lacking. Pallasmaa goes on to talk about the power of architecture of a time (in the Heideggerian sense) to communicate across the ages as a form of time-capsule of Zeitgeist:

“The temple of Karnak takes us back to the time of the pharaohs, whereas the Medieval cathedral presents us the full color of life in the Middle Ages. In the same way, great works of modernity preserve the Utopian time of optimism and hope; even after decades of trying faith they radiate an air of spring and promise. The Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto is heartbreaking in its radiant belief in a humane future and in the societal mission of architecture. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye makes us believe in the union of reason and beauty, ethics and aesthetic. These works do not symbolize optimism and faith; they actually awaken the sprout of hope within us.” 15

 Eduard Hildebrandt, ‘View of the Ruins of the Temple of Karnak’, (1852)

The notion that ‘time will tell’ is often the hallmark catch-cry of those who seek to judge the intrinsic value of a work of architecture. On one end of the spectrum this relates to what can be called ‘Timeless’ architecture, that which carries on a profound symbolic or cultural meaning much longer than intended. This however does not mean that it escapes or transcends time all together but rather as architectural critic Paul Goldberger states in Why Architecture Matters (2009):

“[Timeless architecture] may have qualities that transcend the immediacy of its moment, and it may communicate eloquently to people living in different times from the one in which it was created.” 16

Ostensibly, within architecture this is done by a seeming rejection of time, by manufacturing a façade of immortality. Timeless architecture does not explicitly position its perceived value through its tectonics yet they serve the purpose of emphasising a presumed infinite and immutable reality of the object, which we know can never actually be true of any artefact. If time is essentially a field of sequential change, then an object which does not seem affected by this state is assumed to be ‘outside’ of the grasp of time, a form of immortality that would be anathemic to any self describing neo-fluxist.

For Vitruvius the fundamental criteria for the judgement of architecture lay within his oft extolled ‘firmitas, utilitas, and venustas’. 17  For Vitruvius it was one matter to state how something can or should be built and another altogether on how he judged the quality of a singular work. 

Quality for Vitruvius was not limited to rigid notions of structure, or purely based upon functionality. Rather, it also meant its intrinsic aesthetic quality; for lack of a better word, it’s beauty. Vitruvius listed the ways in which a piece of architecture in its own way comes to embody an aesthetic of timelessness, that being through order, arrangement, eurhythmy, symmetry, propriety and economy. These physical aspects of a design would stand in for those aesthetic abstractions related to the value of an architecture.18

If Vitruvius outlined a criteria for the judgement of the value of architecture, then it was the 15th century Italian architect and polymath Leon Battista Alberti that called for an architecture of permanence. Alberti’s role in the formation of the architect as author, and by extension architecture as its own profession separated from the notions of master-builder are well known. However, it is within his own response to Vitruvius' treatise on architecture that laid the foundation for what has been the dominant mindset for architecture for more than half a Millennia. 

In Alberti’s habitus for architecture to be ‘truly great’ it must be complete and unalterable from inception and to the point of the original completion of drawings and models. That the construction which would follow would conform to every aspect of this ‘perfect’ design and every detail within.  Building upon this he put forward the influential idea that a building’s perfection was directly tied to its immutability, and any change or revision would irreversibly undermine, alter or destroy that beauty. 19 He summarises this notion succinctly in one passage from his treatise On the Art of Building (1485):

“That reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse. It is a great and holy matter; all our resources and skill and ingenuity will be taxed in achieving it, and rarely is it granted, even to Nature herself, to produce anything that is entirely complete and perfect-in-itself.” 20     

Thomas Cole, ‘Architects Dream’, (1840)

American historian Marvin Trachtenberg discusses this as becoming the dominant mindset in Western Architecture:

“Alberti categorically rejected this ubiquitous method, opening an unbridgeable chasm between designing and building (the one, in fact, that we live with today). In his ideal architectural world, in absolute antithesis to contemporary practice (as well as his own eventual work as an architect rather than writer all of the learned, extended, redundant, and comprehensive planning and replanning preceded construction. Any changes during execution were ruled out.” 21

Indeed Alberti proposed (although contextually one could argue with some sense of irony):

“...We may determine in advance what is necessary and make preparations in order to avoid any hesitation, change, or revision after the commencement of  the work...” 22

By casting ‘perfect’ architecture as necessarily immutable, Alberti arguably was successful in positioning architecture's opposition to time as the necessary foundation of the mindset of the architectural profession. This understanding of time as an inherently negative destructive force, ‘time the destroyer’, was a significant break from the long-dominant cultural construction of time as a positive, creative force that had been dominant in the ancient and mediaeval periods. Within which while the latter encompassed an expectation for a building to be modified whilst it was still being constructed and even after it was ‘finished’, the antithesis of Alberti’s ‘great building’ required no change once drawings were complete. 23 24 25

Alberti cast his architectural reasoning of the ‘great perfect building’ as being in step with nature’s ability to create fully formed ‘perfect’ assemblages. This contrasts strongly with the classical reasoning of nature that saw constant change as inherently ‘natural’ and as part of the ‘essence’ of things. Trachtenberg highlights this poignantly by comparison to Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphosis (8 CE) with the lines:

“My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms”... “Whatever is beneath the heavens change their forms, the earth and all that is within it.” 26

Architectural philosopher Karsten Harries contrasts the organic approach of the Baroque with the ‘classical’ approach also apparent in Modernism:

“The former invites metaphors that suggest absence, change, life, time; the latter invokes metaphors that suggest presence, stasis, death, eternity.” 27

According to Trachtenberg, Alberti’s reasoning for the denial of time in his architecture is seen as an attempt to create a humanistic power over time. That is, for the architect as an individual to shape and control it, rather than be subsumed by it. The ability for the expansion of the temporal through design, the compression of the temporal through the production of architectural artefact and finally a collapsing or reversal of time, or an architecture of duration through the apparent immutability of the final ‘perfect’ object granted the illusion of power to the author and in doing so Alberti presents what appeared to be a methodology for building against time. 28

What may be of interest here is that Alberti understands the need for a durational approach within the construction of ‘great buildings’. He states that for proper construction, time must be taken to ensure both the materials and the technique are of the ‘appropriate’ duration. This somewhat paradoxical view of the operation of building as durational has been linked by Trachtenberg to Alberti’s humanist tendencies; Alberti understands the negative force of time ‘on the lives and works of men.’ 

Indeed Alberti’s final book in the treatise talks about restoration, decay and ruin of works, and the irrevocable destruction of architecture. For Alberti the terror of time is that it negatively impacts every aspect of ‘great building’, and it is only in the careful and measured design of architecture that time can play any positive aspect before it is resisted at all costs. 29

With Alberti’s treatise and influence we see the abandonment of a durational reasoning that had lasted and served architecture from Antiquity through to the Renaissance. The reverberations of the desire for an ‘immutable architecture’ continued to be felt from Alberti’s time, through to the Modernist Bauhaus Movement and Gropius’s call for ‘the complete building’ which still manifests today with the deeply problematic notion of building ‘against’ time rather than ‘with time’. 30

The Terror of Time

“Architecture is not only about domesticating space, It is also a deep defence against the terror of time,  The language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality.”

Karsten Harries, Building and the Terror of Time, 68. 31  

When we consider Alberti’s approach to foster an ‘immutable architecture’ or to build ‘against’ time, we know that he is reacting with fear to the durational finitude of not only architecture as artefact but also the mortality of man. German architectural philosopher Karsten Harries elaborates on this point in his seminal work Building and the Terror of Time (1982), in which he advocates for an architecture in tune with the temporal. For Harries, mankind’s utilisation of architecture as a tool to defy the psychological effects of time are apparent. Harries traces shelter as the most fundamental way to provide a protection from times of terror, to banish those feelings of vulnerability and mortality.32  Harries elucidates:

“Building has been understood to be a domestication of space. To domesticate space is to tame it, to construct boundaries that wrest place from space. Such construction receives its measure from our need to control the environment. Control should not be understood here too narrowly: it is not just a matter of creating an artificial environment that offers protection against an often unfriendly world; as important as physical control is psychological control.” 33

Furthermore, Harries goes on to state the innate relationship between man, architecture and time:

“Talk of architecture establishing place by the construction of boundaries in space suggests a quite traditional distinction between arts of space and arts of time, between formative and expressive arts. The distinction has a certain obviousness; yet our experience of space and our experience of time are too intertwined to allow us simply to accept it. Thus, if we can speak of architecture as a defense against the terror of space, we must also recognize that from the very beginning it has provided defenses against the terror of time.” 34

We see here a connection to French philosopher Gaston Bachelard on the primitiveness of refuge in The Poetics of Space (1958):

“Well-being takes us back to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically, the creature endowed with a sense of refuge huddles up to itself, takes to cover, hides away, lies snug, concealed.” 35

Harries ties this instinctive desire for shelter against time, with Bachelard’s notions of comfort derived from memories of protection. Here we link ideas of shelter to memories of stasis, safety and control. The enclosure becomes the psychological protection from change. Nostalgia and memory replace the uncertainty of external existence. 36  

Harries explains that the symbolism inherit to the temple, church or house creates a repetition of ‘divine archetypes’.   Through the act of worship or dwelling, man is able, albeit illusionary, to become atemporal  and escape the terror of time. Indeed of all the typologies, the house comes to signify a unique position in the lives of its inhabitants. 37 Romanian historian Mircea Eliade states the fundamentally natalist view of the house

“A ‘new era’ opens with the building of every house. Every construction is an absolute beginning; that is, tends to restore the instant, the plenitude of a present that contains no trace of history.” 38

One of the ever-returning concepts in relation to architecture and time is the notion that as architecture continues to develop, it is consistently cast in opposition or resistance to what seems the changing state of ‘nature’ or in less secular-times ‘the divine’.  The notion that architecture can provide an escape from the flux and chaos of the natural world is not new.

Pieter Bruegel, ‘The Tower of Babel’, (1563).

For Harries the greatest mythical analogy is that of The Tower of Babel. Here we have an artifice born of man's pride that seeks to challenge the divine and in doing so extol their mastery over both the physical and spiritual world. Harries points to Bruegel's painting as showing man trying to dominate not only space but also time, and in doing so revealing his total inability to do either. 39 The building continues ever forward as previous iterations crumble, decay and return to the landscape. On the small dwellings built into the side of the tower Harries has this to say:

“Against the tower itself modest shelters nestle much as buildings may nestle against some city wall or church in a mediaeval city.
Here we have, not monuments, but buildings that speak of a very different, less antagonistic relationship to time. They hint at possibilities of dwelling born of a trust deeper than pride. Such trust demands determinations of beauty and building that do not place them in essential opposition to time.” 40

It’s potentially here that an antidote might be found for the antagonistic building ‘against’ the terror of time, architectural historian Karen Franck interprets Harries view particularly in relation to Babel:

“For Karsten Harries, Bruegel’s painting illustrates the prideful desire to resist  time by constructing monumental buildings that dominate time and space, but also another human desire: to create modest, human-scaled structures that are responsive to their neighbours, as shown nestled against the tower and making up the city below.” 41

The Lives of Buildings

“A building lost is never regained.
That is perhaps the strongest argument for proceeding cautiously and assuring that the difficult decisions about what to save are not made in response to the short cycles of taste and fashion.” 

Paul Goldberger, Why Architecture Matters, 2009. 42  

There is a view that architecture is inheritably ‘natalist’, fixated on the ever-increasing production and eventual discarding of built artefacts and edifices. This notion of a genealogy of architecture that in fact only has the binary existence of ‘alive or dead’ before issuing a plethora of offspring is problematic. As Charles Jencks would formulate and formulate time and time again, architecture may develop over time and bifurcate due to cultural or technological change, however this in and of itself is not the same as biological reproduction. Reacting against Alberti’s dominant ‘immutable architecture’, there are a multitude of ways architecture can be a process that reacts to and with change, evolving and extending over time rather than being artificially encapsulated by what appears a perpetual moment, a stasis in time.43  

In a practical sense ‘The Lives of Buildings’  does not merely refer to a binary state of ‘alive or dead’ but rather the multitude of differing existential states. From a tectonic sense  there is little reason why architecture can’t be infinitesimally mutable and changing, as Arup researcher Steven Groák describes as:

“An open and unstable system composed of flows of energy and matter.” 44

Or perhaps more fatalistically as Stephen Cairns and J.M. Jacobs put forward in their work Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture (2014):

“[On Architecture] It has lives as well as a death – an ending that can also be designed in advance.” 4

Architectural theorist Jill Stoner has set out in her text The Nine Lives of Buildings (2016) possible definitions for the varying states of ‘architectural lives’ and how these affect the temporal nature of all architecture, they are as follows. 46

i) Abandonment

Stoner argues that abandonment becomes the oldest and most ‘natural’ state for a building once it has outlived its intended purpose. The power of the site of abandonment is tied not only to what architectural form or ruin remains but rather the echo back of a collective memory of place. The act of separation of place from a time of use is significant. As Stoner elaborates:

“Sites of abandonment tend to embody the stories that rendered them obsolete, whether from failing economies, political upheavals or nuclear disasters...These buildings acquire character [and by extension a new form of place]; they become witnesses to the slow motions of time, and prophecies of possible futures.”

ii) Demolition

The power and the fury of the wrecking ball: demolition  reflects a more wasteful enterprise of the built environment. As architecture has become a mass commodity that proliferates the landscape, Stoner sees a classical example of demolition in the urban renewal and slum clearance of the 1950’s-60’s within the United States. Consecutive post-war waves of demolition and new building were seen as ‘the bell that cannot be unrung’. For stoner the rupture caused by demolishment ‘removes potential and revokes any future; a demolished building’s second act as landfill offers little possibility for any life beyond its first.’

Author Unknown, ‘Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe’, (1972). Pruitt-Igoe, St. Louis, USA. Minoru Yamasaki 1951-1972/76

iii) Deconstruction

In comparison to demolition, deconstruction comes as the systematic dismantling and salvage of a building’s components, thus keeping them, as Stoner says, ‘alive for future use’. Not purely an outcome of Anthropocene age economics, deconstruction is an ancient method for interacting with architecture. The removal and replacement of materials to create entirely new architectures has been prevalent for as long as man has been building.

iv) Preservation, Conservation, Restoration

The act of preservation, conservation and restoration places an inherent value judgement on any particular piece of architecture. This represents an echo of Alberti’s perfect building. However, all three methods speak directly to combating (or in the case of restoration) attempting  to revert the mark of time on physical form. This protection against time is generally tied to cultural understandings of an architecture of a particular time or related to a particular event. As Stoner puts forth, ‘as a strictly material art, preservation and restoration are independent of use.’ 

v) Renovation and Rehabilitation

Remaking what is seen to be a dilapidated building, renovation and rehabilitation occupy a space of differentiation from Stoner’s definition of preservation, conservation and restoration. The cultural or architectural significance may play no part in the reasoning for rehabilitation. Rather the act is to make the architecture fit to purpose, whatever that may be. Here we see not necessarily an attempt to reverse time but rather to reset the clock all together in what can become nothing more than a facsimile of what once stood in its place. 

vi) Adaptive Reuse

The increasing trend of adaptive reuse sees a building or site redesigned and modified to suit another purpose altogether. As with conservation the cultural significance of a building may be retained even if the original function is drastically altered. However for Stoner, adaptive reuse is often an act of economically motivated rather than done in the name of nostalgia  or cultural preservation of place.  

vii) Reoccupation

As with adaptive reuse, reoccupation looks at the recovery of abandoned architecture.  This can be done in a much more informal nature, rather than with what Stoner calls ‘preservationist pretence’. A significant determinant of whether something is ‘reoccupation’ is its inherent unsanctioned and provisional or ‘socially fragile’ nature. Stoner points to this perhaps being the oldest form of recovery of abandoned architecture. 

viii) Pure Expression:

For Stoner ‘Pure Expression’ comes to be the artistic expression or intervention either ‘aggressively temporary’ or ‘enduring for a millennia’. In this way, the physical act of transformation acts  as a ‘call to attention’ of a ‘transformative moment in time.’ Appropriation, and totally discarding architectural and convention, becomes a powerful artistic tool of commentary. 

Ezra Orion, ‘Tribute in Lights’, (2010).

viii) Resurrection

The final category given by Stoner relates to the recreation either as piece or in total replication of an architecture that has all disappeared. Here is an echo of that call for immortality of architecture, often in a symbolic simulacrum rather than facsimile. A powerful example Stoner gives is the ‘Tribute in Light’ which occurs every year on the anniversary of the 11th September destruction of New York’s Twin Towers and entails two beams of light that act to replicate the since-disappeared silhouettes of the iconic buildings.

The removal of a building can have profound consequences. As is the apparent nature of time, once gone, they can never truly be recovered. If as theorist Paul Virilio once wrote ‘the invention of the ship was also the invention of shipwreck’, surely the invention of an architectural work is also the invention of its eventual architectural ruin. 47 Along these lines, it should come as no surprise that the image of ruin is such a powerful motif for architects and laypeople alike.  The American sculptor Robert Morris stated the power of the ruin in The Present Tense of Space (1978) as such:

“Approached with no reverence or historical awe, ruins are frequently exceptional spaces of unusual complexity, which offer unique relations between access and barrier, the open and the closed, the diagonal and the horizontal ground plane and wall.  Such are not to be found in structures that have escaped the twin entropic assaults of nature and the vandal.” 48

Andreas Huyssen in her text Nostalgia for Ruins (2006) traces the ‘cult of ruins’ in dominant Western discourse from the time of the enlightenment up until contemporary times. More powerfully she speaks of the language of ruins in recent times and their relationship to evolving ideas surrounding modernity:

“The cult of ruins has accompanied Western modernity in waves since the eighteenth century. But over the past decade and a half, a strange obsession with ruins has developed in the countries of the northern transatlantic as  part of a much broader discourse about memory and trauma, genocide and war. This contemporary obsession with ruins hides a nostalgia for an earlier age that had not yet lost its power to imagine other futures. At stake is a nostalgia for modernity that dare not speak its name after acknowledging the catastrophes of the twentieth century and the lingering injuries of inner and outer colonization. Yet this nostalgia persists, straining for something lost with the ending of an earlier form of modernity. The cipher for this nostalgia is the ruin.” 49

Arata Isozaki, ‘Tsukuba Center’, (1979).

Returning to Karsten Harris’s notion of architecture as attempting to placate ‘the terror of time’, he puts forth the ruin as the most obvious ‘counterimage’ to this form of architecture. Here the comforting images of permeance and the nostalgic memory of refuge are replaced with a physical artefact which acts as a testament of the failure of the architect to stave off this terror. However, the silver lining in the image of the ruin for Harris is the notion that it can call for reflections on the vanity of human building and the sublime power of nature. Human construction here appears to surrender itself to space and time.’ 50

The humanistic aspect of the ruin can become a powerful architectural device that speaks  with the past, present and future. As a recurring example in the oeuvre of a single prominent architect, architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa in Hapticity and Time – Notes on Fragile Architecture (2000) explains how the architectural language of fellow Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s mid and late period work works in a humanistic way to deal with the temporality of the ruin:

‘An explicit device of Aalto’s for capturing a sense of time is the image of a ruin. He utilizes explicit or subliminal images of ruins to evoke a melancholic experience of the past, and of the inevitability of erosion, decay, and death. Aalto juxtaposes images of permanence (stone, brick) with images of transitoriness and loss (erosion, climbing plants and the patina of mold).

Even the changing of light concretizes the passing of time. Opposed to the mechanical imagery of a machine process, the materials that Aalto uses express a humanizing touch of a skilled hand. Aalto’s attitude reverses the modernist ideal, which sought to give a machine appearance even to components produced by hand.” 51

For Pallasmaa the way Aalto utilises architectural gestures throughout his oeuvre is an exemplar for a successful methodology of transcending the negative aspects of time and instead utilising them as positive architectural drivers. Here the utilisation of the passage of time as a manifested architectural aesthetic across a multitude of durational tectonics enlivens the architecture so that in return it may come to live its many lives.

Etienne-Louis Boullée, ‘Cénotaphe à Newton’, (1784).

On Geometry, Cosmos and ‘Timeless Architecture’

“Form is nothing else but a concentrated wish for everlasting life on earth.”
Alvar Aalto, Alvar Aalto, the Early Years, 192. 52

The power of geometry lies in its ability to generate powerful emotional responses in those who perceive it. Whether this is an innate as that of an archetype, purely perceptual as with gestalt theory or a learned response is not entirely relevant. Geometry has the ability through simplicity or complexity to seem ‘true’ or ‘sacred’. It has been described this way since before the time of Plato. Naturally within architecture it also presumes a dominant position as a tool for use by the architect. Geometry’s seemingly memetic ability to generate its own mysterious mythology in regard to time;  take for example Le Corbusier’s fable of the origin of building, his  primitive builder insists on simple geometric forms, as they are to endow what he builds with that aura of reliability that seems to protect against time. 53 Karsten Harries utilises the example of two lines in relating the power of geometry against his concept of ‘the terror of time’ as such:

“Take two lines: one dashed off, restless, resembling handwriting; the other a  circle, constructed with the aid of a compass. The two stand in very different relationships to time. The former has directionality; we can speak of a beginning and an end. The latter gestures beyond time; in its self-sufficient presence it comes as close as a visible form can to the timeless realm of the spirit.” 54

Karen Franck interprets this as an attempt to cope with Harries ‘terror of time’ by ‘spiritualising the environment.’ She goes on to state:

‘Simple geometric forms, straight lines, right angles, regular polygons, such as a circle drawn with a compass, come ‘as close as a visual statement can to the timeless realm of the spirit, while an ‘expressive squiggle’ has an organic look and seems to embrace time.’ 55

This utilisation of geometry to generate form comes to be a tool for the interpretation of the value of architecture and particularly its aesthetic characteristics. Take this foundational extract on geometry, form and beauty from Plato’s Philebus (360-347 BC):

“I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals or pictures, which the many would supposed to be my meaning; but, says the argument, understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measurers of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, other things, but they are eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they peculiar pleasures, quite unlike the pleasure of scratching. And there are colours which are of the same character and have similar pleasures.” 56

Returning once more to Harries we see a contrast between the appeal of organic geometry as being ‘in step’ with time against inorganic geometric forms that belong rather to the sacred realm of the spirit rather  than the body. For Harries a defining feature of sacred geometry is the difficulty of recreating without tools (the example of utilising a compass to draw a circle is given) to show how such simple, yet complex to generate, geometry is literally out of reach of the corporeality of the body. 57 This recurring theme that links geometry to sacred space and therefore the repudiation of time in place of the eternal also has strong architectural links to the development of a language of modernity. French Enlightenment architect Claude Nicholas Ledoux was seemingly fascinated with the power of simple geometric forms. In his refusal to submit to what could ostensibly be called Vitruvian doctrine of ‘the art of building’, he rather claimed that:

“The first principles of architecture are to be discerned in symmetrical solids, such as cubes, pyramids, and, most of all spheres, which are the only perfect architectural shapes which can be devised.” 58

For some prominent architectural historians such as Emil Kaufmann the ideas and hyperreal designs of Ledoux and Boullée alongside others such Violette-Le-Duc became a fundamental foundation for the later development and acceptance of Modernist Architecture. 59 Returning to Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, we see how he located geometry and form as part of the mental task of architecture in relation to Harris’s ‘terror of time’, Aalto concluded early in his career that:

“Form is nothing else but a concentrated wish for everlasting life on earth.” 60

A similar vein of reasoning is carried on by Austrian postmodern architect Hans Hollein, who reiterated in Absolute Architecture (1968):

“Architecture if a spiritual order, realised through building. Architecture - an idea built into infinite space, manifesting man’s spiritual energy and power, the material form and expression of his destiny, of his life. From its origins until today the essence and meaning of architecture have not changed. To build is a basic human need. It is first manifested not in the putting up of protective roofs, but in the erection of sacred structures.” 61

This notion of cosmogony and ‘divine building’ alongside sacred geometry and form seeks to cast the architect and by extension man as the promethean creator of tangible timeless ‘spiritual space’. Through the act of construction this ‘cosmic’ manifestation can take place. Harris sees this as a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to this ‘timeless’ aspect:

“Building can help to establish or to reinforce such interpretation; a building that presents itself as an imitation of divine building can claim to give temporal existence its proper measure and foundation.” 62

Despite this highly spiritualised notion of architectural space there have been significant attempts to create a form of taxonomy towards those factors that create ‘sacred space’. One such classification is known as ‘Brills Approach’ which sets out the following fourteen methods for the creation of ‘sacred space’. 63

i) Making a Location and Center

 The creation or acknowledgment of a centre symbolises a reality, versus the non-reality of uninterrupted, homogenous, and formless space. Spaces of quality are, therefore, the physical embodiment of centre on the earth – it is substantial and expressed as a fixed location.

ii) Making Orientation and Direction 

Timeless place has an orientation and direction with relation to the centre and each of these directions express qualitative differences. The directions can be expressive of different meanings such as the pleasure of sunrise, the terror of sunset, forward and backward movement, left and right movement, levity towards heaven or downward movement into the chaos. 

iii) Spatial Order 

The creation of center with subsequent orientation and direction results in the generation of spatial order that is highly valued. When embodied in a sacred place, it signifies victory over the chaotic space. Sacred places, therefore, reveal the spatial order, suggesting our need for it. 

iv) Celestial Order 

Celestial order expresses the play of celestial rhythms in space. This order in a sacred place could also be created and based upon celestial references such as the locations and cycles of the sun, moon, stars and winds. 

v) Differentiating Boundaries 

Each of the boundaries related with the four directions is fixed, clear, distinct, and equidistant to the centre. These boundaries reveal different qualities when compared with each other suggesting symmetry but not sameness. 

vi) Reaching Upwards 

Spaces of Value are expressive of verticality, signifying a path to the heavens. Verticality is embodied in sacred spaces to subsequently come closer to what is divine. Verticality is articulated in a place by opening it to the sky, or providing soaring walls, columns and the like  that reach upward toward the heavens. 

vii) Triumph over the Underworld 

It  is the counter property of reaching downward towards the watery chaos of the underworld. Such a property of reaching downward is conquered through the process of place making. Examples of such situations include sparse water under our control, for example; a water fountain, shallow still pool or cistern, an ordered garden that is bordered and controlled. 

viii) Bounding

Bounding expresses differentiation and defines the distinct domain of an ordered cosmos from the chaos. Boundaries are, therefore, distinct, and articulated in three-dimensional space in the form of walls, floors, and roofs. Of these three, the roof is most expressive of our desire to reach the divine. 

ix) Passage

Passage is achieved through dematerialisation of staunch wall boundaries and is embodied in such a manner that one is able to enter and leave a certain space; it forms a continuity and means of communication between the two opposing domains present inside and outside the space. It is typically large in size to accommodate the divine and godly enhancement that occurs on exit from sacred place. 

x) Ordered Views

The importance and significance of passage is maintained by restricting views between two realms of space that can be called sacred and secular, divine and ordinary, valuable and ordinary. This enables a sacred space to sustain and reinforce its sacristy and keeps it distinct from the outer world. Direct views between the two types of spaces are avoided. This characteristic is observed through the limited use and specific location of openings such as windows and doorways. 

xi) Light 

The daily cycles of day and night, being light and darkness, signify an unending cosmic struggle. Light signifies hope with the rising of the sun each day and enables us to experience the changing world. In certain spaces it is symbolic of the passage of time and is typically serving to provide orientation and contrast from the surrounding darkness. 

xii) Materials 

Light reveals the texture and form of materials in a sacred place. The materials that make up valuable spaces are symbolic of the cosmic struggle and victory over the chaos. Therefore, building materials used suggest a certain quality of expression, the selection and placement of materials indicate the presence of this quality. These materials are resistant to erosion brought about by natural forces and maintain their formal integrity and physical order. 

xiii) Nature in Our Places 

 An important feature of quality in a space is that it contrasts with the disordered vastness of nature surrounding it. Nature maintains its natural spirit, but is subdued, controlled, bordered, ordered and tamed. In this sense, nature is constantly cared for, controlled and ordered, signifying the image of balance and taming the chaos. 

xiv) Finishing a Place

 The act of creating an architectural space signifies an absolute beginning – it is a divine repetition of the creation myth or the creation of the world. Therefore, ritualistic and consecrate acts and ceremonial celebrations mark the act of completion of the building. Such ceremonies signify the reality and enduringness of our efforts in finishing the place for habitation or any other function.  

In contrast to the aforementioned intersections between time, architecture, geometry and sacred space there is the viewpoint of Japanese architect Toyo Ito who attempts to bridge the perceived gap between nature and architecture. The benefit of man through the acknowledgement of the profound power as well as the flaws in classical or pure geometry and the orthogonal grid which Ito see’s as being antagonistic to the ‘world of natural phenomena’.  Rather than the classical order, Ito utilises an organic-fluid order of change which is ‘relative, flexible and soft’. Rather than the rigidity of immutability, such an architecture can be influenced by external factors and reacts to change and flux rather than outwardly resisting it through artifice. 64

Tadao Ando, ‘The Hill of the Buddha’, Sapporo, Japan. (2015).

On Timeless Architecture

“What was, has always been. What is, has always been, and what will be, has always been. Such is the nature of beginning.”

Louis I. Kahn, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, 1986.65 

The notion of ‘timeless’ architecture is a nebulous and somewhat deceptive descriptor. In definition, architecture which is considered ‘timeless’ is of a calibre that seems to remove it from any singular time, in a way transcending style and taste. We know that this is an impossibility, for all architecture regardless of how far reaching its effect may be is a product of not only it’s time and place but also of the rich genealogy of cultural and architectural development that preceded it. 

The second charge of ‘timeless’ architecture is that it manages to evoke an eternal, everlasting, permanent state. In effect ‘timeless’ architecture is called that for its apparent rejection and domination of time itself. On the face of it, calling a work of architecture ‘timeless’ is in fact placing high value on architecture by associating it with the impossible architecture, Alberti’s ‘immutable architecture’ that will persist and remain in some respect seemingly forever. 66

In architect and theorist Sally Essawy’s analysis ‘The Timelessness Quality in Architecture’ (2017) she highlights the following aspects that contribute to the perception of ‘Timeless Architecture’: 67

i) Darkness and Light

 The presence of both darkness and light in an architectural space adds a quality of depth to the space, which is not possible with one and not the other. In many examples of ancient architecture, it is sunlight that is utilised to create the timeless qualities; it is the dominant use of natural light and variable darkness that creates the sense of timelessness.

  ‘Above all else, the beautiful in architecture is enhanced by the favor of light, and through it even the most insignificant thing becomes a beautiful object. Now if in the depth of winter, when the whole of nature is frozen and stiff, we see the rays of the setting sun reflected in masses of stone, where they illuminate without warming, and are thus favorable only to the purest kind of knowledge, not to the will, then the contemplation of the beautiful effect of light on these masses moves us into a state of pure knowing, as all beauty does.’ 68

Louis Kahn on the subject of darkness and light:

‘I would say that dark spaces are also very essential. But to be true to the argument that an architectural space must have natural light,
I would say that it must be dark, but that there must be an opening big enough, so that light can come in and tell you how dark it really is –
that’s how important it is to have natural light in an architectural space.’ 69

ii) Signs of Wear

Signs of wear emerge in defined formalities being broken down leading to a heightened intimacy. This intimacy is achieved when the function of the space and its environment begin to define its texture and form. At a fundamental level, the signs of wear become of primary importance when considering a work of architecture as a functioning process. It is the signs of wear that form a connection with one‘s experience in the present moment as well as an earlier presence and the behaviour of the individuals before that time.

iii) Traces of Workmanship

Traces of workmanship reveal the process of exposing how the space came into being and further our appreciation for is detail. In contrast, the slight error or variance in finish created during construction can impart a sense of authenticity to the architecture, relating it to the human condition, as if it is aware of imperfection. Without this presence of human error the richness of life could not be expressed in architecture.

iv) Haptic Intimacy 

One has an increased awareness of the fabric and nature of a space when an intimately haptic relationship is formed with it. This is most likely to occur when it is required due to the function of a space. Thus the fabric of the space requiring one to be intimately aware of it evokes the timeless quality. This first causes us to make more astute observations, considering the relationship of the fabric and oneself, which then results in one reflecting their own nature.

v) Sense of the whole 

A defined sense of the whole of a work of architecture leads to an understanding of it and to a psychological acceptance of what it is without ambiguities of its measure. Sense of the whole should not also be depleted by the presence of inconsequential details. When the finite measure of each part of a work of architecture is understood, the whole of the architecture can be accepted or processed.

vi) Monumentality 

Monumental architecture captures our attention and focuses our thoughts. It is the clarity of a grand gesture that results in a monument like the Sultan Hassan Mosque and the Pantheon both possessing this clarity and indeed having a monumental presence.  The fabric of a monumental building is a physical manifestation of human aspirations. When the monumentality of a space captures our attention it can instil within us feelings associated with pride or purpose, and thus this feeling of timelessness, or of eternity, which cannot be added to or subtracted.

Louis Kahn on the subject of monumentality:

“Monumentality in architecture may defined as a quality, a spiritual quality inherent in a structure which conveys the feeling of it’s eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.” 70

vii) Human Scale:

 When architecture is derived from a human scale the resulting fabric relates to the body of the user allowing them to gain physical understanding of the fabric through their relationship with it.  Comfort, found in the whole composition as well as the many increments that contribute to the whole, encourages the use of a building. Hence, the connection that is made is deep, as in one’s mind the whole can be understood from the logic of its smaller parts.

viii) Water:

The presence of water in architecture provides relief as its softness contrasts with the otherwise hard surfaces of architecture and reinforces the impression of the experience on the mind. Water has the ability to bring the mind from ideological thought down to the ground level of reality, thus anchoring the mind in the present moment.

ix) Cohesion: 

Architecture that is informed by the logic of its place forms a cohesive unity with its physical surrounds while drawing from the area’s cultural history. The cohesion with the physical surrounds integrates the architecture into the place while building on an understanding of the living patterns ensures its relevant significance to people of both the past and future. As Peter Zumthor has stated, some buildings fit into their places in such a way that they themselves become part of their surroundings and appear firmly anchored in there. In this relation, it is important to remember that:

“It is worth noting that  the timeless quality is not dependent on the presence  of a particular aspect, or a combination of a number of them, though it is  believed that when experiencing a work of architecture, the greater the number of these aspects that are perceived, the more potent the quality of timelessness will be. We can then conclude that through a practice of architecture which considers this insight, as well as others like it, and which is pursued with a heightened awareness of the senses, the timeless quality is achievable.” 71

Alvar Aalto - Finland Säynätsalo Town Hall Parviaisentie 9, Säynätsalo (1949-52)

On Humanistic Approaches to Time

“We can say that architecture always contains a human error, and in a deeper view, it is necessary; without it the richness of life and its positive qualities cannot be expressed.”

 Alvar Aalto, ‘Inhimillinen virhe’ (The Human Error). 72

When we take a humanistic approach to time in architecture we must consider the origins of architecture Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore discussed this in their seminal Body, Memory, and Architecture (1977), exploring how architecture was in essence a human-centric disciple, that it was a ‘body-centred’ art form. 73 Writer Robert Lamb expresses what he perceives as the Humanist instinct as such:

“The humanist instinct looks in the world for physical conditions that are related to our own. For movements which are like those we enjoy, for resistances that resemble those that can support us, for a setting where we should be neither lost nor thwarted. It looks, therefore, for certain masses, lines and spaces, and tends to create them and recognize their fitness when created. And, by our instinctive imitation of what we see, their seeming fitness becomes our real delight.” 74

In architecture, this notion of the humanist instinct that tries to understand the haptic world through sensory input, that is between the interaction of the body and the architecture. This provides for the possibility of an ongoing experiential, and as Lamb puts it ‘intelligible, usable order’, which allows us to consistently experience a changing perception of architecture.75 Bloomer and Moore relate how “The centre of that architecture was the human body,” we   feel an arch “spring,” a line “soar,” or a dome “swell,” the body responds long before we understand the richly coded cultural messages and symbolic meanings. 76

A fundamental notion of this body-centred architecture is tied to the notion of change. For Bloomer and Moore buildings change over time because we as humans change over time. A lack of consistency breeds a plurality of variation in our day to day lives, our thoughts, feelings and actions. The power of architecture is to operate within this human condition but also potentially to react and create unique moments of delight in this ongoing fluctuating field of variation. 77 Here to we might consider the following passage from Christopher Alexander in  regards to both humanism and timeless building in his work The Timeless Way of Building (1979):

“There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are. It is so powerful and fundamental that with its help you can make any building in the world as beautiful as any place that you have ever seen.”

When we consider Heidegger’s philosophy of ‘dwelling in time’ we would consider the humanistic notion that in creating architecture we are attempting to create, as architectural theorist Randall Teal describes, a ‘microcosm of human existence’. The building alone does not create the architecture, it requires the inhabitation of the space by man, both in terms of the maker in the case of architect and those who come to dwell within. In Teal’s analysis of Heidegger’s ‘dwelling in time’ we find this positions the act of making humanistic  architecture as of a greater concern than the role of the architect as author. 78

Charles Moore , ‘Piazza d’Italia’, New Orleans, USA. (1976-79).

On Contextual and Vernacular Approaches to Time

“All building has its origin in a confrontation with nature, that is never free of violence.” 

Karsten Harries, Context, Confrontation, Folly, 12. 79  

“Temporal mixing characterizes the buildings called vernacular.”

 Henry Glassic, Vernacular Architecture, 70. 80

When we talk about contextual approaches to architecture in regards to a shifting frame of temporality we reflect upon what could be perceived as the regular division of ‘context’ by architecture. At the forefront and in common parlance we consider the immediate surrounding of a site as its context, although this is normally related to the design stage of architecture. 

In reality the ‘context’ is the ever-changing setting for both place and architecture. A natural division (mind the pun) is  between what is commonly conceived as ‘man-made’, that is built-environment and that of ‘nature’ and the surrounding ecology. In terms of a contextual approach to time in relation to built environment notions of the vernacular come to mind. Although another nebulous and often ill-defined term, vernacular in a way reveals itself as a patchwork ermine coat of ever changing features. The definition as set out by Bernard Rudofsky in The Prodigious Builders (1977) seems appropriate for what we are trying to describe:

As a rule, it [vernacular architecture] is tailored to human dimensions and human needs, without frills, without the hysteria of the designer.
Once a life style has been established and habit has begotten a habitation, change for change’s sake is shunned. 81

Again, the humanistic notions previously discussed come to bear on notions related to the temporality of habitation. Rudofsky is not positioning the vernacular as being oppositional to change, but rather change comes through interaction and necessity rather than from a vacuum. A critical awareness of context is enacted through changes in vernacular architecture of any particular place. ernacular architecture is affected by what Robert Hart Lamb refers to as the:

“…Unconscious mimetic instinct; to mirror – to reflect – the movements and feelings we sense in both the people and places around us.” 82

A similar mimicry becomes ingrained in a contextual approach to place and temporality, and again we can quote Rudofsky to exemplify this:

“The untutored builders in space and time-the protagonists of this show demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings.
Instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature, as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography. Ephemeral as some of these structures may be, “the shapes of these houses, sometimes transmitted through a hundred generations, seem eternally valid, like those of their tools.”83

A recurring thematic of architecture which is contextually sympathetic and by extension with time rather than against time, is a holistic approach which sees the temporality of landscape not as a separate element for the architecture to resist or dominate but rather to be sympathetic as to mutually benefit one another over time.  One particular ethos is that which is communicated by Japanese architect Tadao Ando in writer Kate Nesbitt’s Towards New Horizons in Architecture (1996), where Ando is quoted as stating:

“I compose architecture by seeking an essential logic inherent in the place. The architectural pursuit implies a responsibility to find and draw out a site’s formal characteristics, along with it’s cultural traditions, climate and natural environmental features, the city structure that forms a backdrop, and the living patterns and age-old customs people will carry into the future.” 84

Unknown Author, ‘Traditional Norwegian House’, Ninnerdalen, Norway. (n.d.).

In relation to the cyclical nature of the natural landscape as to man and to architecture, Tim Ingold concludes in The Temporality of the Landscape (1993):

“The rhythms of human activities resonate not only with those of other living things but also with a whole host of other rhythmic phenomena - the cycles of day and night and of the seasons, the winds, the tides, and so on... In many  cases these natural rhythmic phenomena find their ultimate cause in the  mechanics of planetary motion, but it is not of course to these that we resonate. Thus we resonate to the cycles of light and darkness, not to the rotation of the earth, even though the diurnal cycle is caused by the earth’s axial rotation. And we resonate to the cycles of vegetative growth and decay, not to the earth’s revolutions around the sun, even though the latter cause the cycle of the seasons. Moreover these resonances are embodied, in the sense that they are not only historically incorporated into the enduring features of the landscape but also develop-mentally incorporated into our very constitution as biological organisms.” 85

For Pallasmaa, the works of Alvar Aalto react to their context and history in a highly humanistic and experiential manner that fully engages with the temporal in architecture:

“The surfaces of Aalto’s buildings wrap around their volumes like a skin, enhancing an organic cohesion and an animistic feeling. Aalto’s buildings are a sort of architectural organism, not abstract compositions. Surfaces are richly textured and they exhibit a variety of tactile experiences. Instead of an abstracted gestalt, Aalto creates conglomerate images that evoke associations and recollections. The Villa Mairea, for instance, is suspended between imageries of contemporary modernity and ageless peasant traditions, between refinement and primitivism, the future and the past. The powerfully emotive image of the Saynatsalo Town Hall is a condensed image of a hill town, reminiscent of familiar childlike images in Medieval paintings. This minute civic building, conceived as the image of a miniaturised town, possesses an extraordinary suggestiveness, richness and sense of mystery; the image of a town projects a greater wealth of narratives and emotions than that of a single building.” 86

Architectures of Permanence

“Monumentality in architecture may defined as a quality, a spiritual quality inherent in a structure, which conveys the feeling of it’s eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.” 

Louis Kahn, Louis Kahn Essential Texts, 21. 87

The research so far has led to a series of conclusions regarding the application of temporality within architecture. From this we can conceive of three dominant modes of architectural-temporality, the first of which takes its place within the thus far much-discussed architecture of ‘timelessness’. 

This architecture which speaks to Alberti’s ‘Immutable Architecture’ as well as Karsten Harries ‘Terror of Time’ is perhaps the most readily describable and paradoxically the most tangible. In drawing down from the language of pure geometry and sacred space an architecture of permanence attempts to not only distance itself from a perception of the passage of time but to try and remove itself from this field of changing events all together. 

In its strong reliance on Euclidean space and tectonics of massing and weight an architecture of ‘Permanence’ is easily imagined as a bulwark against the manifestations and interactions of change inherent to time. Here we have the accumulation of matter into monumental form as a manifestation of the eternally-unchanging. As previously discussed, this architecture of permanence relies on a multiplicity of links, motifs and suggestions which try to locate its architectural language in the realm of the eternal. This is done through a sense of otherness caused by cosmic, crystalline and sacred spatial symbols to invoke a sense of perpetuity. 

Through this connection to infinity the architecture may attempt to deny the entropic nature of all architecture and matter. This is a strongly object-oriented and seemingly self-referential architecture which not only repudiates change but also through its sheer existence may attempt to deny its own contextual nature through the language of architectonic dominance.

Antón García Abril, ‘Musical Studies Centre’, Santiago di Compostella, Spain. (2002)

Architectures of Duration

“When water, wind, light, rain, and other elements of nature are abstracted within architecture, the architecture becomes a place where  people and nature confront each other under a sustained sense of tension. 
I believe it is this feeling of tension that will awaken the spiritual  sensibilities latent in contemporary humanity.”

Tadao Ando, Towards New Horizons in Architecture, 460. 88

The second dominant mode of architectural temporality comes to be expressed as an architecture of duration. Here we see a definition of architecture which instead of opposing time embraces it in order to enrich its meaning and create a deeply humanistic and existential form of architecture. If it is true what art historian Joel Smith claims that “buildings embody durational time” 89 an architecture of duration not only seeks to relate to the human scale, it seeks to connect deeply to its context. Through its variation, materiality and sheer sensory and haptic nature it draws attention to the passing of time. Architect Peter Zumthor in his text Thinking Architecture (2010) summarises the effect of such a phenomenological architecture on human experience through the durational nature of materiality:

“Naturally, in this context I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use. But when I close my eyes and try to forget both these physical traces and my own first associations, what remains is a different impression, a deeper feeling – a consciousness of time passing and an awareness of the human lives that have been acted out in these places and rooms and charged them with a special aura. At these moments, architecture’s aesthetic and practical values, stylistic and historical significance are of secondary importance.’ 91

An architecture of duration relies upon a frame of reference in relation to changing circumstance. This could translate to an architecture that re-acts to its contextual environment and natural phenomenon such as the weather, a materiality of change (such as timber or exposed metal), the utilisation of circulation and procession to create a rhythmic measurement of time or finally spatial programming that allows for constant change dependent upon utilisation. This alongside an embrace of not stasis but constant cyclical renewal and remaking of architectural space see a celebration of the passage of time, the movement of nature, the weather and cultural ritual and tradition. To quote Tadao Ando once more:

“The elements of nature-water, wind, light and sky-bring architecture derived from ideological thought down to the ground level of reality and awaken man-made life within it.” 92

It is in this way through a durational mode of architectural temporality that we may truly create buildings that embody durational time.

Ryue Nishizawa, ‘Multi Family Home’, An Giang, Vietnam. (2017)

Architectures of Ephemera

“[Architecture] longing for permanence, which reacts against uncertainty, against continual change, and against the value given to the instantaneous,  the immaterial, and the temporary.”

Gregotti Vittorio, Inside Architecture, 64. 93

The third dominant architectural temporality mode we can identify is that of ‘Ephemera architecture’   and we can consider it as being more than just oppositional to architectures of permeance. Ephemeral (from the Greek ‘ephemeros’, meaning ‘lasting only one day, short-lived’) architecture is that which subverts the expectations of an architecture through a sense of impermanence somewhere between appearance and disappearance of matter and therefore appears ‘frozen’ in time momentarily. 

This could mean impossible or an architecture ‘in tension’ such as that which appears to defy laws of gravity or massing. Architecture whose tectonic components are spatially separated yet retain their form or an architecture of unexpected ethereal materiality (such as dominant utilisation of glass or light).  

Ephemeral architecture in this way can become a synecdoche for a larger function or message. Ephemeral architecture challenges the assumed nature of buildings and architecture as products and signifiers of stability, and as purely a background for ‘sites of collective memory’. Ephemeral architecture has gained particular relevance in relation to modernity, when we consider cultural artefacts of mass-media and production are referred to as ‘Ephemera’ the utilisation of ephemeral architecture has become a particularly useful critical tool for contemporary practitioners.94

“Yet despite this longstanding association, many buildings are built to be temporary: tents, refugee camps, theatrical stages. Indeed, in modernity, temporary construction has become the norm thanks to cheap materials and an appetite for the new. We construct certain architecture to be ephemeral, Feeting, in a similar fashion to other forms of disposable mass media, from newspapers to demonstration posters. This taste for ephemeral buildings was inaugurated by technological innovation of the World Fairs, where monuments were erected for a season. The ephemerality of an apparently solid constructed  world enabled a fantasy for spectators of control over their monuments, an ability to dismiss their presence that augurs the possibility of being freed from the burden of visible traces of the past. Furthermore, the periodic creation of an artifical environment made for spectators from the man-made materials of iron and glass suggests a new rhythm for technology, whose anticipated (and often spectacular) obsolescence mimics natural cycles of biological growth and decay.” 95

Thomas Heatherwick, ‘SEED: UK Pavilion Shanghai Expo’, Shanghai, China. (2010)

The Synthesis: Experiential Architectures of Place

“Contemporary architectural settings are usually experienced as having their origin in singular moments of time.
They evoke an experience of flattened or rejected temporality. Yet, the existential task of architecture  is to relate us to time as much as to space.” 

Juhani Pallasmaa, The Space of Time, 54. 96

The three architectural temporalities outlined here (Architectures of permanence, duration and ephemera) react to time and space in very different ways. Permanence attempts to resist time, duration attempts to inhabit it and ephemera attempts to momentarily freeze it. Although such a positivist classification is inherently limited it does create the potential for the formulation of differing temporal methods of architectural praxis. There is no ‘correct’ method for architecture to react to time but it is through the layering of these three different architectural temporalities that we may be able to generate a multiplicity of both space and time, what can be termed an ‘experiential architecture of place.’ That which utilises the phenomenological ‘lived’ and sensory experience of place to communicate temporal architectural aspects alongside acts of permeance, duration and ephemera.

“There is no interruption of the overall impression by small parts that have nothing to do with the object’s statement. Our perception of the whole in not distracted by inessential details. Every touch, every join, every joint is there to reinforce the idea of the quiet presence of the work.” 97

“All the techniques of representation and all the paths to architecture which do not include direct experience are pedagogically useful, of practical necessity and intellectually fruitful; but their function is no more than allusive and preparatory to that moment in which we, with everything in us that is physical and spiritual and, above all, human, enter and experience the spaces we have been studying. That is the moment of architecture.” 98

This may also include concrete or abstract reference which creates a memory or simulacrum of place or the history of a particular  context, site, architecture and its associated past or future ritual or event. The result is an architecture of shifting currents, at times harmonious with time, at times disregarding time and at times deliberately trying to bring attention to a moment. These shifting perceptions enrich the architecture.

‘…haptic and multi-sensory architecture makes the experience of time healing and pleasurable. This architecture does not struggle against time, it concretizes the course of time and makes it acceptable…A distinct “weakening” of the architectural image takes place through the processes of weathering and ruination. Erosion wipes away the layers of utility, ration logic and detail articulation, and pushes the structure into the realm of uselessness, nostalgia and melancholy. The language of matter takes over from the visual and formal effect, and the structure attains a heightened intimacy. The arrogance of perfection is replaced by a humanising vulnerability.’ 99

“After his passionate but short-lived phase of modernist orthodoxy, the mature works of Aalto engage the entire human sensory and emotional realm, and they aspire for a foothold in the flow of time. Aalto developed his emotionally charged architecture of natural materials-red brick, copper, stone and wood which evokes a wealth of imageries, associations and recollections. While seeking to touch human experiential reality, Aalto’s buildings express gravity and permanence, and they radiate a rare sense of authority.” 100

“My perception is not a sum of visual, tactile and audible givens: I perceive in a total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.” 101

Peter Zumthor, ‘Kolumba Art Museum’, Cologne, Germany. (2010)

Conclusions

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” 

Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

This thesis has sought to explore the relationship between temporality and architecture. The great contradiction is that as spatial practitioners it is both immediately apparent and yet difficult to fully understand how architecture and temporality are intertwined. The research presented in this thesis has shown the fundamental shift in architecture that has cast its role as being ‘against’ or ‘apart’ from time, however it has also pointed to ways in which rather than flee from the supposed ‘terror of time’ we may actively utilise temporality within spatial practice to create deeply significant architectures of place, people and memory.

Although it is difficult to say anything is ‘certain’ in relation to even the concept of time, we can as architects choose the way in which we anticipate, embrace and respond to its constant flux. There is great scope to utilise a varied language of temporality in our architectural works. This may mean an evolved architectural language that actively combines notions of permeance, duration and ephemera as attempted in this project or it may be undertaken in a multitude of other undefined or presently unknown ways. In doing so we can not only enrich the meaning and cultural value of design works, rather we can also seek to enact an architecture that forms part of a greater experiential, innately humanistic and perhaps most optimistically of all, meaningful architectural dialogue.

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  Sally, Essawy. “The Timelessness Quality in Architecture.” International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, vol. 06, iss. 02, pp. 265-273, 2017.

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  Smith, Joel. The Life and Death of Buildings: On Photography and Time. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven: Distributed by Yale University Press, 2011.

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  Teal, Randall. “Immaterial Structures: Encountering the Extraordinary in the Everyday.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), vol. 62, no. 2, 2008, pp. 14-23.

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A Reading of the Utopic/Dystopic Future City in Film, Postmodern Architecture’s Rejection of the Dream

‘Unfortunately, the sclerosis apparent in our cities also reigns in our heads. No one believes anymore that we can build that city on a hill, that gleaming edifice that has fascinated every Utopian Thinker since Plato and St Augustine. Utopian visions have too often turned sour for that sort of thinking to go far. Gloom and pessimism are more common – are Beirut, Sarajevo or even Los Angeles, with its riots and smogs, the only future we can envisage?’

Harvey, Cities of Dreams, 1993:18

‘Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.’

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1979:72

‘Tower of Babel Sequence’ from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis 1927.

The art of cinema, as a recent human cultural phenomenon, is one of the more powerful indicators of the zeitgeist. As a representational medium, cinema holds a prized position at the centre of cultural production due to its near universal accessibility by audiences through its undeniable embrace of modernity. It may not be surprising that film often relies upon the bombastic language of what Guy De Debord calls 'The Spectacle' in capturing the attention of the masses. Walter Benjamin's seminal work in cultural studies, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), frames the role of film and modernity succinctly:

By close-up of the nothings around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film on. On the one hand, it extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1935

It is for this reason that depictions of the possible ‘future city’ are such powerful thematic aesthetic attractors in film. Architectural theorist Anthony Vidler argues that cinema not only has an undeniable marked influence on modern architecture, but modern architecture also has a profound influence on cinema, whether through décor, mise en scène or the ability given to break out of its ‘frame’. It is perhaps no surprise then that Vidler elucidates upon this through the words of famed Soviet film director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein, for whom 'Films undoubted ancestor is – architecture'. Following this train of thought, we can see why, within cinema, it is the city that is often chosen as the metaphor for exploring ideas related to modernity.

The image of the city - real or imagined, provides a ready map to understand the details, languages, cultures, forms of production and power structures that shape what it means to be modern. Yet, as with any map, the artifice, in its attempt at static depiction and reproduction of reality, fails to accurately show the breadth of fluidity and immeasurable factors that comprise life in the metropolis. Despite this, although rarely accurately prescient, depictions of the ‘future city’ not only reflect current societal anxieties but also have a profound ability to affect technology, culture, and architecture. They allow for exploring potential alternatives of what may be possible, free from the constraints of practicality and immediate contemporary concerns.

In October 1924, the famed Austrian expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang found himself in Manhattan, New York, exploring in a very real way the concrete reality of the city. He is fascinated by the emergence of what we now take for granted as the ‘modern city’: glimmering glass towers that seemingly ascend to the heavens. An architecture seemingly impossibly removed from that of the European tradition. Simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the excessive accumulation of what surplus value can produce under Taylorism-driven capitalism, Lang questions the social cost of such production, reflecting upon the social upheavals currently transforming the young bourgeois nation of Germany.

Within Germany, in stark contrast to the United States at the height of the Roaring Twenties, society is immensely fractured. Still reeling from the devastating social and economic realities of The Great War, the polarisation of the nation is palpable. The near advent of a socialist revolution in Berlin and the state of Bavaria resulted in a dismantling of the worker’s movement. However, the leftist cultural groundswell is still strong, particularly emboldened by the complete consolidation of Russia by the Bolsheviks. As the National Socialist German Workers' Party quickly strengthens, the German state is paralysed between two competing but potentially actualised utopias. The first was a socialist state born from the class struggle and armed revolution. The latter was the remaking of the German economy through the rising tide of the Industrialists as facilitated by the United States extending arm of globalism.

In Fritz Lang's seminal Metropolis (1927), one of the very first feature science fiction films and predating much of what we consider ‘modernist architecture’ today. We are confronted with the uchronia of the futuristic year of 2026, which initially seems a utopic city of the future but quickly turns dystopic. The wealthy ruling class lead lives of hedonism suspended high above the ground in glazed skyscrapers amongst clubs and pleasure gardens whose aesthetic echoes a confusing language of art-deco, techno-city and ancient Athens as envisaged through the modernist language of the architecture. Towering buildings dwarf an urbanity of seemingly swarming automobiles and aircraft impossibly traversing across the verticality of the city.

Meanwhile, far below this staggering vertical metropolis lies the worker's city, whose inhabitants are depicted toiling endlessly in shifts to produce the energy that sustains the city at the cost of their own lives. Depicted through an extended montage sequence that overlays the workers' struggle with that of despotic slavery manifest in the biblical image of the Moloch as they feed the ‘Heart Machine’ of the city. Here, Lang explores the frightening dystopia that is true Marx reification, the domination of the embodied work over the living work, of the energy provided to the metropolis over the lives of the workers. The main plot of the film sees the young son of the ruling-class Master of Metropolis, Freder Fredersen, fall in love with Maria, the forbidden spiritual leader of the underclass of workers and subsequently attempt to become the prophesied ‘mediator’ between the ruling class or 'the brain' and the working underclass 'the hands'. The plot becomes further complicated with the introduction of the first automata depicted in the film (a doppelganger of Maria described as perfect: ‘All that is missing is a soul’.) who is utilised by the spurned inventor Rotwang in an attempt to deceive the workers into destroying the city and unknowingly their own children in the lower city in the ensuing revolt. Freder eventually prevails in saving the city as its anointed ‘mediator’ (read: emergent middle-class), but not before the doppelganger automata is revealed as a machine and destroyed by the mob in a Luddite-like frenzy which echoes the paranoia of the looming machine-age and the confusion between human and machine.

The Moloch as 'Heart Machine' Sequence from Fritz Lang's Metropolis 1927

 Destruction of 'Heart Machine' Sequence from Fritz Lang's Metropolis 1927

The thinly veiled takeaway message of the film beyond the somewhat naïve yet earnest character-driven ‘Between head and hand, the heart must mediate' is twofold. First, a warning to the working class against the dangers of rebellion, and second, the triumph of the fictional city belongs not to the workers who overcome through unity, but rather to the 'mediators'. Apart from the duality of the potential of the future city and horrors under the surface, the plot of Metropolis is endlessly deep in semiotic and cultural reading, not just for the urbanistic problems presented by the machine-like 'future city' but for the representation of a class struggle that’s only solution is the intervention of the privileged upper class. In playing out the anxieties of a rapidly industrialising urban Germany, the cognitive estrangement fostered so strongly in Metropolis generated a response that would shape architectural practice for decades and echoes even today. Depictions of utopic urbanism enacts what Le Corbusier, amongst other modernists, based their attempts at constructing the 'City of Salvation’.

Much as Metropolis could be seen as attempting to explore and mirror the perceived emergent opportunities and conflicts caused by rampart Fordism and the explosive breakthroughs in technology and modernist urbanity, we can jump forward in cinematic history (and backwards chronologically in fictional timelines) to a vastly different but arguably bleaker vision of the ‘future city’. In what could be considered the spiritual successor of Lang's Metropolis, we have Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). Within the ‘future city’ of Blade Runner, we see the devastating effects of the post-industrialist epoch on the city and its inhabitants. Where Metropolis located us in an exaggerated gleaming Manhattan, Blade Runner finds its backdrop in the decaying fictional 2019 Los Angeles via an injection of Tokyo’s electronic aesthetic of neon lights backdropped by ever-present steam, darkness and acidic rain.

Compared to the clean and seemingly ‘rational’ modernist future city found in Metropolis, Los Angeles is pictured as the true postmodern city, steeped in an aesthetic of decay, undergoing the essential self-destruction that post-industrialism unfettered entails. If the Industrial city, as depicted by Metropolis, indefatigably never stops producing, in the post-industrial city, we find a constant need for recycling; therefore, the city requires a never-ending supply of waste. In dystopic 2019, waste is the only way for the squalid urban population to survive. The furnishings of the continuation of the high altar of consumerism manifest, in turn, producing an aesthetic of the recycled, which permeates the entire film. In Blade Runner’s framing of the ‘future city’ as being anchored in post-industrial decay, we see the link between postmodernism and late capitalism connected back to Frederic Jameson’s formation of postmodernism as the dominant cultural logic of late capitalism:

It is in the realm of architecture … that modifications in aesthetic productions are most dramatically visible and that their theoretical problems have been most centrally raised and articulated; it was indeed from architectural debates that my own conception of postmodernism began to emerge. 

Fredric Jameson Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Post-Contemporary Interventions, 1991:54

'The Hypermarket' still from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner 1982

This exaggerated cultural logic of late capitalism finds its architectural manifestation in a sprawling ground plane, which is, in fact, a large market of constant consumption. Here, we have the concrete actualisation of Marx’s salient criticism of the market behind everything. The image of the silent but present 'Japanese simulacrum' of a giant advertisement, which alternates between a seductive Japanese face and a Coca-Cola advertisement, is ubiquitous in the film itself. Consider this against David Harvey’s criticism of late capitalism:

The multiple degenerate utopias that now surround us – the shopping malls and the 'bourgeois' commercialised utopias of the suburbs being paradigmatic – do as much to signal the end of history as the collapse of the Berlin Wall ever did. They instantiate rather than critique the idea that 'there is no alternative' save those given by the conjoining of technological fantasies, commodity culture, and endless capital accumulation.

David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, 2000:168

The architecture of the post-industrial city that is 2019 Los Angeles comes to embody the dominant principles of late capitalism: fragmentation of time and space, hierarchisation, globalisation, and alienation. The depiction of an urbanity of unimaginable verticality is grounded by a ground plane of densification and crumbling infrastructure. The disturbing cityscape of decrepit ruin that is depicted is only punctuated by the monolithic and sinister Tyrell Corporation ziggurat, an aesthetic pastiche of pop Egyptian scenography.

‘The Pop-Egyptian Architecture of the Tyrell Corporation’ still from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)

In comparison to Metropolis, which ties the survival of the city directly to the survival and continued subservience of the underclass, in Blade Runner, we are confronted with a future city that is completely fragmented, a city of ruin that plays backdrop to the plot as an extension of the 1980’s backdrop of fear surrounding the future of the sprawling city. The depiction ignores certain realities of Los Angeles's real urban periphery. Instead, it presents a future urbanity of vertical intensification, degradation and racial conflict, which was endemic to then systemic Reaganite fears surrounding multi-culturalism, immigration and ecological collapse during the height of the Cold War. With exception to the exaggerated verticality, flying vehicles and replicants, a pessimist might see this bleak vision as not far off given the tenuous state of affairs in the very non-fictional but difficult-to-believe today.

We are now in a new form of schizophrenia. No more hysteria, no more projective paranoia, but this state of terror proper to the schizophrenic... The schizophrenic can no longer produce the limits of its own being. He is only a pure screen.

Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication 1987:132

In the plot and setting of Blade Runner, we find the perfect analogue for Baudrillard’s theories of simulation and simulacrum, the urban city itself forming the manifestation of the schizophrenic condition. However, this schizophrenic condition of cultural replication and representation seems to fit with Jean Baudrillard’s and Francis Fukuyama’s evolving ideas of utopia at the time. In fact, they go so far as to tell us this: "The United States is Utopia achieved." The obsession with syntax and codification of image as part of the central existential plot of Blade Runner reveals as much about the characters as the urban realm that allows for the suspension of belief such a scenario entails. The comparison to contemporary architecture is tacit; Dutch architectural theorist Roemer van Toorn summarises it well:

As a practising architect, you no longer know where to look. Every innovative move is doomed to failure from the start. The only thing that proves durable is a specialised, mesmerising style. The architectural profession shuts itself up in an aesthetic vacuum. We live in a schizophrenic situation where the dominant reality is concealed behind an extremely visible and ostensibly liberal pseudo-reality. In short, the critical tradition is going through a crisis.

Roemer Van Toorn, Architecture Against Architecture: Radical Criticism within the Society of the Spectacle 1993:3

In the shifting depictions of the future city in utopia/dystopia in science fiction, as exemplified by the inherently modernist Metropolis and postmodern Blade Runner, we see the recurring themes that utopian longing for a better future become the focus of societal fear and dystopic imaginings. The marked shift between the two films regarding architecture is found in depictions of the urban realm. The future city of Metropolis is not inherently wrong. It is made that way through classist division of labour and the perceived threats of technological change. Within Blade Runner, we find the opposite is true; the city is an extension of the effects of late-stage capitalism; it is post-industrialism and the postmodern in decaying concrete form. Postmodern architecture and urbanism have, from their very inception, been framed as anti-utopian. This does not mean indulging in the multiplicities of utopian schemes is verboten, but rather that the postmodern is cast in direct opposition to the modernist approach and program of sweeping progress. Architectural critic Paul Goldberger states the origins of postmodern architecture emerged ‘from the modest, anti-utopian impulse, from a belief in the incremental movement rather than cataclysmic change.’

The difficulty of the Metropolis/Blade Runner analogue is that in reality rather than fiction, the architectural discourse has broadly abandoned utopian thinking in favour of cynical opportunism and irony. Anti-utopian thinking is not new, but it has been emboldened by the rise of the neo-liberal regime and the decline of state socialism as a viable alternative. David Harvey, who has written extensively on the topic, posits that Utopian longing has given way to unemployment, discrimination, despair and alienation in our built environments and imaginations as spatial practitioners. For American architectural theorist M. Christine Boyer, the rejection of utopic ways of thinking leaves only a piecemeal renewal of the façade of urban space. It strengthens the subterfuge of spatial politics at play in the colonisation of the realm of the ubiquitous neoliberal city. For Boyer, the role of Debord’s spectacle is not forgotten in this obfuscation of the public realm:

Suppose the spectator is mired in realistic narrations and offered no utopic visions. What will produce a disposition for social change, an inclination to draw affinities across all the spaces and peoples of the city? What moral authority can be drawn on to challenge the private claims that have distorted the public sphere?

M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments 1994:476

In this way, Boyer criticises the 'Disneyfication' of public space long since fetishised by Baudrillard and other semiologists for utilising simulacrum and embodying their ideas of the hyperreal. American Architect and theorist Michael Sorkin substantiate Boyer's criticisms of postmodern urbanity, arguing that in place of the once so prominent utopic vision for which architecture was imbued, now all that remains that makes it unique is its remarkable absence. What he calls an urban area ‘awash in trumped (often Trumped) up history.’ The most succinct criticism of the postmodern approach to contemporary architecture is being complicit in denying responsibility for the failures of incoherent architectural and urban methodologies. On elucidating the notion of ‘Reproducing the dream-image, but reject[ing] the dream’, Susan Buck-Morss, in her indictment of contemporary postmodern approaches to urbanity and architecture, best surmises:

In this cynical time of the 'end of history', adults know better than to believe in social utopias of any kind – those of production or consumption. Utopian fantasy is quarantined, contained within the boundaries of theme parks and tourist preserves - like some ecologically threatened but nonetheless dangerous zoo animals. When it is allowed any expression - it takes on the look of children's toys, even in the case of sophisticated objects - it is if to prove that utopia social space can no longer be taken seriously; they are commercial ventures, nothing more.

Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West 2000:26

This essay has sought to link the shifting depictions of modernity and the ‘future city’ in the seminal science fiction films of Fritz Lang’s modernist Metropolis (1927) and Ridley Scott’s inherently postmodern Blade Runner (1982) as a way of understanding the postmodern rejection of utopian ideals prevalent in the contemporary architectural discipline. The essay considers that the outright rejection by contemporary architecture to genuinely engage with utopic ideas of the ‘future city’ and ‘utopic urbanity’ leads to an architecture compromised and complicit with a neoliberal post-industrialised hegemony.

Through the engagement and lens of cultural theory as applied to architecture and its depiction in film and Debord’s notion of ‘The Spectacle’, the essay has sought to reveal prevailing flaws in the fragmented and pastiche language found within the notion of ‘incremental change’. Revealing the reliance on irony, insincerity and semiotic coding as a mask that hides more significant political and economic disruption of public space. The essay finds the current inability to envision a progressive utopic ‘future city’ either in fictional dreaming or concrete reality by the architectural discourse. 

• Referenced Works

  Adam, Thomas. Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History: A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia. Transatlantic Relations Series. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

  Baudrillard, Jean. The Ecstasy of Communication. Translated by Bernard Schütze and Caroline. Semiotext(E) Foreign Agents Series. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012.

  Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Prism Key Press, 2010 (Original work published 1935).

  Boyer, M. Christine. The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

  Bruno, Giuliana. "Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner." October, no. 41 (1987): 61-74.

  Buck-Morss, Susan. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.

  Calvino, Italo, and William Weaver. Invisible Cities. London: Vintage, 1997 (Original work published 1974).

  Chambers, Iain. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. Comedia. London; New York: Routledge, 1994.

  Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

  Debord, Guy, and Donald Nicholson-Smith. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994.

  Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. World of Art. 4th ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

  Gaudette, Emily. "Blade Runner: How Close Are We to Flying Cars and Replicants?" Newsweek. Published electronically October 5, 2017.

  Glancey, Jonathan. "From Metropolis to Blade Runner: Architecture That Stole the Show." The Guardian, June 11, 2009.

  Goldberger, Paul. "Postmodernism: An Introduction." Architectural Design 47, no. 4 (1977): 256-260.

  Harbou, Thea von, Fritz Lang, Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, and Gustav Fröhlich. Metropolis. [Electronic Resource]. [Subiaco, W.A.: Kanopy, 2012] Fully restored digitally remastered version.

  Harvey, David. "Cities of Dreams." Guardian, October 15, 1993, 18.

  Harvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

  Harvey, David. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

  Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

  Lang, Fritz. "Destruction of 'Heart Machine' Sequence from Fritz Lang's Metropolis," 1927.

  Lang, Fritz. "'Metropolis Opening Sequence' Sequence from Fritz Lang's Metropolis." architecture.org, 1927.

  Mancini, Marc. "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be." The Future as Depicted in Movies 21 (May/June 1985): 11-15.

  McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: ARK Paperbacks, 1987.

  Parmalee, Patty Lee. "Rethinking Utopia: From Metropolis to Batman." Rethinking Marxism 4, no. 2 (1991/06/01): 79-91.

  Pinder, David. "In Defence of Utopian Urbanism: Imagining Cities after the ‘End of Utopia’." Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 84, no. 3-4 (2002/10/01): 229-241.

  A Police Spinner Flying Beside Huge Advertising-Laden Skyscrapers. Blade Runner at 25: Why the Sci-Fi F/X Are Still Unsurpassed. Popularmechanics.com, 2017. Film still.

  Poulsen, Joergen. "Natural Society, Reification, and Socialist Institutions in Marx."

Searching for Urban Complexity in Contemporary Digital Practice

Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia 1999-2011

The legacy of the machine age of the twentieth century, as manifested in the built environment of the 'modern' urban cityscape, is one of complexity but also a homogenous character. The dominant economic framework of capitalism, alongside the application of a century of both Fordism and Taylorism combined with the modernist planning agendas, has imbued the urban centres of the planet with a distinct 'sameness' that reflects the somewhat linear productive mechanisms utilised in the age of mass-production, mass-consumerism and globalism. (Verebes, 2015a) As architects, the self-imposed separation of the physical production of architecture in opposition to design generation has been regimented up until recent times by the linear assembly-line ideology of modernity and the somewhat representation-bound nature of the two-dimensional 'drawing' (May 2015).

However, following the aftermath of the 'digital turn' (Carpo, 2013) in Architecture in the early 1990s and the continuing uptake of digital design methods and workflows in applied practice primarily due to market forces, there are new opportunities to explore architecture's role as a discipline in the development of 21st-century urbanism. This essay will seek to explore how digital design methods that make use of relational complexity and parametric feedback, such as those prevalent in current generation Building Information Modelling (BIM) software, may be utilised alongside complex network theory soon to enable the 'mass-customisation' of our cities through City Information Modelling (CIM) and help envisage and enact a more 'biological' 21st-century urban complexity in our cities.

The speed at which the world is urbanising in the 21st century is unprecedented in the history of mankind, and of critical concern amongst theorists and citizens alike is the inherent homogeneity of the built environment such rapid urbanisation creates in the long shadow of modernism. Verebes (2015a) expands upon this specifically in relation to developing nations such as China, where hyper-urbanism is approached in a tabula rasa matter with entire cities appearing through traumatic erasure of place as urban areas continue to encroach formerly rural regions in a phenomenon known locally as 'tan da bing' or 'making a big pancake'. Verebes positions this against Archizoom's prescient No-Stop City project of 1968, which describes a city devoid of character, without character and without compromise. Despite the current paradigm shifts of the information age, the planning and development of urban areas still need to be approached from the mechanistic and overly simplified market-driven nature of 20th-century urban development. In contrast to this, Verebes repeats in an interview with Shanghai specialist material fabricator E-grow's Jerry Ku that the increasingly prevalent utilisation of computation and digital fabrication technologies is a profoundly significant influence on the built fabric of future cities despite the current state of ever-increasing homogeneity (Verebes, 2015).

Archizoom, No-Stop City 1968

As Michael Weinstock writes in 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Sentience in Cities', cities are the most complex artefacts ever produced by humans. This inherent complexity is not purely due to the densification of any particular area but rather due to the constant flow of information and energy throughout their systems locked in cycles of growth and decay, which are not tied to linear processes or easily observed relationships. (Valverde & Solé, 2013) Working across scales, factors related to the spatial and material rely on 'power scaling, self-similarity across a range of scales, and 'far-from-equilibrium' dynamics' '(Weinstock, 2013) to affect the dynamic patterns of urbanity. Weinstock, building on the back of his earlier work in Architectural Emergence (Weinstock, 2010), goes on to link this to the mathematical, biological metabolism of organisms, an idea in itself that has fascinated the Avant-Garde of architecture over the 20th century for example in the work of the Japanese Metabolists (Koolhaas & Obrist, 2011).

The difficulty of trying to analyse and not only replicate the inherent complexity of a system such as a city but also seek to generate new urban form cannot be understated and is perhaps why the field of City Information Modelling (CIM) is still in a fledgeling state despite the core ideas of 'Smart Cities' making its way into the public lexicon as well as the agendas of statutory planners and architects alike in recent years (Townsend, 2013). The infancy of CIM can also be placed at the feet of the digital tools produced to serve the architecture and built environment professions, which could be too 'static' for such a task. As Mark Burry states:

The paradox is that for decades, architectural software has striven to emulate the analogue working practice that architects developed over the past two centuries and, as a group, architects have not been especially motivated to assist lifting themselves out of the analogue design methods rut.

Mark Burry, Scripting Cultures: Architectural design and programming, 2011:17

A possible solution to this 'static' architectural workflow that inhibits the creation of accurate City Information Modelling relies on the utilisation of complex data sets generated both over time and live through urban embedded sensors, alongside algorithmic and machine-based learning methods to better model and forecast not only the growth and decay of cities but also to better understand the variables that affect the system across scales depended on information and energy inputs. In this way, it may be possible to generate new urban forms that address the need for more variation in cities and the problems they generate. (Boyer, 2015)

One of the core issues of the potential success or failure of City Information Modelling in reshaping the future urban fabric of our cities is the notion of the hierarchy of decision. Those such as Weinstock who follow those cities might best replicate the biological processes of nature not through controlled biomimicry but merely by the fact of their own organisational complexity argue for a city devoid of overarching authors where the system itself dictates its own evolution. The notion of a 'stigmergy' model within City Information Modelling that forecasts the evolution of cities relates to the application of network theory, which describes the autonomous nature of agents within the model (either real in the case of analysis or virtual in the case of future modelling or a combination of both) generating urban forms and solutions. (Valverde & Solé, 2013) This is at odds with the dominant architectural mentality of authored works. As Valverde and Solé (2013) state:

Like other man-made artefacts, buildings are the result of purposeful design; However, biological structures are not, as their lack of top-down planning requires alternative construction based on bottom-up rules.

Valverde and Solé. Networks and the City, 2013:114

This does not discount that strong rule-based (or parametric) behaviour may exist in organic agents' creation of biological structures. Instead, it points to constant and incremental organic feedback as the generator for generating complex organic forms. To replicate within artificial simulated models of cities ability for an incremental generation, it may be necessary to completely reconsider how we define cities in our models. The performative shift in architecture to that of conditional factors which determine such generative output rather than more traditional static form aestheticism may hold the key to this new way of considering City Information Modelling when applied to the search for evolving and novel urban forms rather than replicating and expanding on the failures of contemporary urban planning and the machine age. (Leach, 2015) This in itself could be considered in terms of what Delanda (2005) describes as the difference between material properties 'extensive space' and immaterial properties 'intensive space', where the interactions between agents within the model in terms of non-tangible characteristics (pressure, speed, density) are given as much focus as the tangible (form, materiality, scale).

Such models look built up from the 'bottom-up' layering complexity through the transfer, replication and mutation of information within the system rather than hegemonies of top-down rule-based overarching generation of complexity. Leach (2015) compares the way better interpretation and application information systems have already redefined the role of the designer concerning Building Information Modelling (BIM) in terms of the 'logistics of construction' or how the application of datasets through the utilisation of Geographic Information System (GIS) has redefined the role of planners. For Leach (2015), it is not a question of traditional design versus computational design but the application of computational information that will 'revolutionise' design and redefine the architect's role.

This expanded role of the architect in relation to computational information alters the discipline's interaction with their projects. Rather than the traditional methods of production that architecture is accustomed to, the role of 'designer' is replaced with that of 'interpreter', with the architect serving as a conduit for the many sources of information that act upon one another to create urban changes. This sees their traditional early project involvement expand to what could be considered perpetual post-occupation involvement. Physical and virtual manifestations live on beyond a traditional architectural project's 'traditional' lifecycle. (Garber, 2017) Concerning City Information Modelling, architects can plug their datasets and models into larger (preferably public) meta-models of the city commons to help facilitate positive outcomes for the city system and its urban complexity.

At odds with this more 'organic' generation of City Information Modelling, which relies on the democratic, bottom-up generation of urban complexity, is the notion of Schumacher's (2016) 'Parametric Urbanism', which depends upon the rule-based generation of urban morphologies that in Schumacher's (2016) words:

The rule-based generation of urban morphologies based on scripts that differentiate, modulate and correlate the different subsystems like fabric welds, path systems and open spaces deliver a complex, variegated urban order that is as information-rich and navigable as natural landscape formations.

Patrik Schumacher, Parametric Urbanism, 2016:117

Zaha Hadid Architects, C Tower, Rising in The Waterfront High-Rise Center of Shenzhen City, 2021

A core difference in Schumacher's work is the reliance on what he coins 'Hegemonic Parametricism', unlike other methods of generation of complex urban form to solve the problem of homogeneity or 'sameness' in future cities that are strengthened by a democratic intensification and sharing of information across actors in a 'stigmergy' model. To generate complexity, Schumacher's hegemonic centric model aligns itself with prevailing neoliberal market forces to counter what he sees as 'Garbage Spill Urbanisation', which could be applied to City Information Modelling and is radical in its own right but, at its core, is a sense of immutable control mechanisms in the guise of parametric or algorithmic constraint that decide what is acceptable or not acceptable in the context of the city. Whether this more controlled form of urban morphology generation has the longevity of those models that seek to give autonomy to its agents is questionable despite Schumacher's claims of an 'Autopoiesis of Architecture' (Schumacher, 2011). This fundamentally goes against cybernetics 'law of requisite variety', which requires any controlled system to have a greater variety than those under control to remain stable. (Fournier, 2015)

Regardless of the varying viewpoints regarding the application of City Information Modelling as a digital tool for the generation of urban morphologies in the future, there is both great potential and significant risk for the architecture profession and the breadth of urban complexity of cities in the future. (Fournier, 2015) Only recently has the idea of modelling and simulating incredibly complex systems in the form of urban morphologies been well outside the reach of the slow-to-innovate architectural community.

Architecture is now on the precipice of having the digital tools and knowledge of being able to model systems to the complexity requisite of the future city, and critical to these systems of simulation is the ability to introduce a variety that enables the system as a whole to remain poised on what Kaufmann calls 'the edge of chaos' (Kauffman, 1995) which in turn allows for both the systems continual persistence but also the ability to survive potentially catastrophic events. The potential applications of the new field of City Information Modelling and their wide-scale ramifications for architectural practice in the 21st-century urban environs searching for variety over homogeneity have never been more apparent.

• Referenced Works

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  DeLanda, Manuel. "Space: Extensive and Intensive, Actual and Virtual." Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

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  Garber, Richard. "Digital Workflows and the Expanded Territory of the Architect." *Architectural Design* 87, no. 3 (2017): 6-13.

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  Weinstock, Michael. *The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation.* Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2010.

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