Architectural Speech (Part 2)

Continued from Memar 01

6 — The pedagogical language of architecture sometimes goes beyond the reciprocal relationship of instruction between artist and art-seeker, adding new dimensions to it, and in the form of criticism, theory, and interpretation, undertakes the recognition of architecture within the broader context of history and culture, and the opening of its path toward the future.

Perhaps the most fitting approach to examining the distinction between the pedagogical language of architecture and the language of criticism and theory — and the relationship each bears to the essence and truth of architecture — is to return to the nature of "art" or "making," the domain in which architecture resides. Art is the attribute of certain particular human acts. Not all human acts possess this attribute. What is the attribute that elevates human acts to the rank of art?

If we liberate "art" momentarily from the heavy burden of meaning — the meaning of virtue that Iranian culture and literature have laid upon it — and consider only its practical reality, no word better expresses its meaning than the word "making." But what quality is there in making that certain other acts and deeds lack? Among all the acts and deeds whose occurrence we describe with the common verb "doing" or "carrying out," which ones do not possess the quality of making? Since antiquity, certain tasks have been called "mere labor" and their practitioners "laborers" or "hands." The more modern term is "unskilled worker" or "zero-grade worker." This "zero" precisely marks the threshold of entry into a higher rank — the domain of skills. But skills themselves, though they share some elements of art, do not stand at the rank of making. Making is a process — a practical or operational process — that leads to the production of a complete instrument. Such a process is synonymous with invention. The creative process does not have two separate stages in which an idea or concept forms in one stage and then, in a separate stage, the formed idea is translated into action. Thought apart from action resembles a soul apart from a body: it has no place in the earthly world. The recipient of art — one may call them the receiver, the accepter, the seeker, the desirer, the devotee, the friend, the admirer, or the buyer of art, and we have chosen "art-seeker" to encompass all these meanings — simultaneously engages in both practical use and the perception of form. Therefore, the condition for the realization of a work of art is that the artistic creation become the medium of exchange between the artist and the art-seeker, conveying the artist's thought and action to the art-seeker's action and perception. On both sides of this relationship, the artist and the art-seeker are two complementary beings without whose mutual participation art is not born. This participation does not require two individuals present at the same time and place, for art is a historical exchange that far transcends the boundaries of individuals and generations.

7 — "Skills," though they share some elements of art, do not stand at the rank of making. The creative activity of the artist is an integral — connected and indivisible — activity, whether external or internal. The creative impulse is organic, for creativity is not solely in the artist's thought; simultaneously, it resides in their action as well. Making is a process — a practical or operational process — that leads to the production of a complete instrument. Such a process is synonymous with invention. The creative process does not have two separate stages in which the idea forms in one and, in another, the formed idea is translated into action. Thought apart from action resembles a soul apart from a body.

8 — The product of making is placed at the disposal of the user, but beyond that, it is also put before their perception and understanding. For these two relationships — "use" and "perception" — are inseparable and interdependent. The agent of use and perception also performs both roles simultaneously. What one perceives as the perceiver from the made instrument is a totality commonly called "form" or "composition." No instrument, or even a purely decorative object, however simple, can lack form and composition. Even if two stones are stacked together with the slightest intervention, they still possess surfaces and protrusions or recessions whose totality constitutes their composition or form. Form and composition and structure, as one observes, are of the same kind and can be used interchangeably. "Made" also means both that it has been fashioned — bearing witness to its maker and creator — and that it possesses "structure" and "form." In this way, "maker" is synonymous with "form-giver" and "creator of composition."

Before this, we said that making is different from doing or carrying out. Making is a particular act through which something — an instrument — is made or takes form. The maker, that is, the one who gives structure or form. The made work, at once and in an inseparable manner, contains both the elements of utility and form. If having form is a necessity for the making of an instrument, this does not mean that were an instrument freed from the constraint of that necessity, the absence of form would not count as a deficiency. Such a deficiency leaves the need for the perception of form unanswered, or deprives its possessor of the pleasure of perceiving form.

9 — Invention and creativity and the creation of form, composition, figure — and the elevation of human action to a degree above ordinary acts — still does not fully explain the nature of art. Art is the emanation of the artist's thought and action through the transformation of natural material into a useful and form-bearing instrument. But so long as the twin elements of utility and form are not absorbed into the life and perception of the receiver and accepter, the process of art remains incomplete. The thought and action of the artist must still reach the action and perception of the art-seeker through the mediation of the artistic creation. On both sides of this relationship, the artist and the art-seeker are two complementary beings without whose mutual participation art is not born. This participation does not require two individuals present at the same time and place, for art is a historical exchange that far transcends the boundaries of individuals and generations.

10 — Architecture is the art of making an instrument called "building" or "structure," and in this respect it resembles other instrument-making arts. What is an instrument, and what relationship does its use bear to the perception of form? All things that humans make may be counted as instruments. The simple, primitive instruments, with the advance of civilization and science, have been transformed into the complex instruments of today. Every instrument possesses a quality that determines its degree of importance. There are instruments that lose their quality more quickly and, upon losing it, depart from the environment of life; many others retain their quality for a long time and remain in the living environment for years on end. Instruments that endure and share our days with us and among us acquire a kind of right to life — indeed, a right to companionship and cohabitation. They become members of the ensemble, the environment, the space, and perhaps even of the human family, and the human being extends their own temporality onto them. The shorter their lifespan, the lesser the pull of companionship and cohabitation with them. Today's disposable instruments inspire no desire for companionship or cohabitation; we discard them immediately after using their quality or consuming their contents. In mechanical and motorized instruments, which have gained great importance in the modern age, physicality and stasis — and consequently the capacity for form-bearing — have diminished, while movement and energy delivery have gained prominence.

Thus, form-bearing is no longer their exclusive means of realization; rather, it is a possibility subdued and forced into retreat before the powerful force of movement and energy delivery. The greater the role of movement and energy delivery in an instrument, the lesser the role of form-bearing, membership in the environment, and participation in the temporality of human life — like motors and mechanical and electrical installations of homes, which are placed in spots out of sight and earshot. The quantity and intensity of the utility of such instruments increases, but their formal capacity and membership in the familiar human environment has been sacrificed.

The instrument that architecture makes — namely the building, in whose very name the element of "making" is so emphatically present — more than all other instruments and together with all of them, constitutes the environment of our companionship and cohabitation with them, with instruments. How is the human being's relationship with this source of form and energy, this wellspring of life and perception? For example, when one sits on a chair, instead of expending one's own energy to hold the body at the height below one's knee, one draws the necessary energy from the four legs that hold the seat at that height; and instead of tiring oneself by keeping one's back straight and losing energy, one leans against the backrest and draws the needed energy for not falling backward from it. This servant-being — the chair — apart from the hours it is in service, spends many more hours in its own designated place, as a member of the ever-present ensemble, announcing its presence and displaying itself. The medium of this presence and display is nothing other than its form. The doorway, wall, and window too, each of which transfers forces and energies, announce their presence and display themselves even more by virtue of their form.

With the effort of machine industry to capture and transmit energy without loss, the customary balance between form and energy has been upset. Gradually the notion has arisen that one can separate the human need for form and energy into two independent needs and satisfy each separately. The assignment of the title of "beauty" to a select group of arts, and the presumption that their artistic standing is above the instrument-making arts, has smoothed the path for the effort to produce a kind of independent, abstract form. Modern architecture, painting, and sculpture have had a considerable share in this effort to attain pure form.

11 — Art is an exchange between the artist and the art-seeker, and the artistic creation is the medium of this exchange. The creation, beyond the utility it provides, through its form produces in the art-seeker a sense of wonder and exaltation. The feeling of wonder and exaltation that arises from form is the perception of something we call "beauty." The perception of beauty causes an acknowledgment of beauty, or "admiration," which is the involuntary response of the art-seeker before the artist — the maker and inventor of form. The allure of this form or composition that causes wonder and exaltation cannot be explained. But experience has confirmed it. Since form is the state of the totality of parts, theorists have endeavored to attribute its quality to the relationships among its parts, and to propose rules for it such as symmetry and proportion — which are to some extent comprehensible — and more complex rules that are not as readily comprehensible. The exchange between the artist and the audience is not based on rational understanding of such rules. What makes the exchange possible is a cultural upbringing that nurtures the entire society for creativity — which is the true meaning of art — and for the perception of its beauty.

12 — Art, which is a social matter, is like society itself: the continuation of the past into the present and future. Every artist learns from the artist of the generation before and teaches the artist of the generation after. They, with the aid of everyday language, in reciprocal communication with their audience, construct the pedagogical and public language specific to their own art. The pedagogical language of architecture refers either to the technique of combining materials to build parts and the combining of parts to build the whole structure, or to the product of this combination, which is the parts and the structure itself. The names of each of the parts suggest a conjoined utility and form; terms such as house, room, roof, porch, and courtyard, and at a more detailed level, arch and niche and door and threshold, and at an even more detailed level, brick and mortar and bond and plaster — all evoke a particular utility and a particular form. What we have said so far — about the synonymy of art with the making of instruments, the conjoining of utility and form in the instrument, the condition for the realization of art in the exchange between artist and art-seeker, the role of form in the instrument's acceptance into the membership of the human living environment, and the acknowledgment or admiration — all are present in the pedagogical and public language, and are evoked through the use of this language. The evolution of architectural creativity invents new and superior techniques and forms. The pedagogical and public language is nothing other than a faithful reflection of these developments. The pedagogical language follows practice and adds nothing to it. Its task is merely definition and description of each form, each part, and each method.

This is the "language of architecture" that is constructed between the artist and the art-seeker. What it evokes is the essence and truth of architecture. But the language of criticism and theory goes beyond this circle. This language makes each element of the apparatus of art-production — to which we have referred — the subject of separate investigation. The most important distinction that has been made in this domain is the separation of utility and form. This distinction, which is founded upon the scientification of the study of art, has — depending on the circumstances of the past century and a half — been the arena of various tendencies, the most important of which are: pure functionalism, with its emphasis on the element of utility; pure formalism, with its emphasis on the element of form; various mixtures of the two; and also extreme subjectivism on the one hand and extreme objectivism on the other. Despite differences in emphasis and direction, what fundamentally unites all these theories is their scientism — the belief that a law of the kind found in science governs artistic creation. Whether in the tendency to consider utility and function as primary and to subordinate form to it, or to grant independence to form and to remove utility from its union — everywhere this belief has prevailed. Scientism has always been accompanied by progressivism. The dominion of progressivism, which continues to drive technology forward, has diminished in the domain of the humanities and art but has not disappeared. Even now, the critic and theorist, in examining and evaluating a new architectural work, measures its novelties and differences against the concept of progress. The difference wrought by the pluralism of post-modernism is that it has converted the absolute values of future-oriented modernity into the provisional values of the present.

13 — One of the essential tools of criticism and theory is the history and periodization of artistic developments. For the art of each period, certain characteristics are enumerated. Beyond the surface characteristics of each period, there are things that continue through two or more consecutive — and sometimes non-consecutive — periods, providing the thread of historical continuity in art. More important than these is a single unifying element that must bind all these periods into one unified history about one unified subject, and then once more fit the ensemble of histories of different arts into one general history of art. This unifying element is art itself — which, however much historians and theorists of art try to escape defining it, will not release them. Aesthetics is one of the theories that attempts to bring the whole of artistic works and art history under its umbrella. All fair-minded theorists consider theory to be subsequent to and dependent on art, for every theory begins its work with the description of the artwork. From the late nineteenth century onward, theorists — some of whom were also artists and architects — have attempted to build a theory of art that could both explain past art and guide its future.