From 12th to 16th October 2002, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, together with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, held a seminar in Tehran and Yazd under the above title. A number of Iranian and foreign university professors, writers and architectural designers took part — as was mentioned in the previous issue. In this issue I shall try to set out, briefly and with a critical eye, the views of three of the main speakers — Michael Sorkin, Charles Jencks and Philip Jodidio1. The text below also draws on Memar's separate interviews with Michael Sorkin and Philip Jodidio.
1 — Charles Jencks
The title and subject of Jencks's paper concerns the substance of his recently published book, The New Paradigm in Architecture2. Jencks holds, in general terms, that the thought of contemporary man, since the 1930s — and the discovery that great heavenly bodies, like a great lens, can deflect the direction of light — has been fundamentally transformed. Mathematics and geometry, which are the tools by which architecture orders itself, have also changed. Despite these transformations, an important part of architectural activity proceeds on the basis of knowledge and patterns belonging to the period before the theory of relativity. The architecture of every period is bound to evaluate itself in relation to the wider categories and the larger world of which it forms a part. According to Jencks, the paradigm is like the water in which architects swim. He holds that the outstanding architectures of history have always rested on the scientific paradigms and on man's image of the cosmos.
Jencks began his lecture with the doctrine of creation in the Christian and Jewish world-views. In these two religious teachings, God is likened to the architect of creation; thus the duty of man is to learn the laws of creation and the order of history in order to draw closer to the Lord. He concludes that the reflection of man's image of the structure of the world in architecture has its root in religion.
Jencks holds that the perception of present-day man is only relatively in the new paradigm of the sciences; today's architecture, even in the best case, has approached the 'paradigm' only in part. He cites seven distinct tendencies in recent architecture, each of which forms part of the great paradigm of today's world:
a) Complexity — Organi-tech, or Ecotech
b) Inspiration from natural forms
c) Inspiration from the structures and data of the man-made environment and the metropolis
d) The use of bubble and droplet shapes
e) Drawing on local signs and forms
f) Use of icons drawn from the new cosmology
g) The creation of ambiguous forms that admit different readings.3
Jencks's thoughts as set out in this lecture and earlier in The Architecture of the Jumping Universe4, although they may seem attractive, are not a scientific analysis of architecture; they rather express a particular tendency in architectural design. His arguments, although outwardly logical, rest on unprovable beliefs. Our first criticism touches one of the foundations of his discussion. As we said, Jencks holds that the important architectures of all historical periods have taken shape on the basis of an image of the cosmos. The fact is that, in the past, man's image of the structure of the cosmos was, in some cases, drawn from architecture. The ancient Romans and the Sasanians did not invent the dome because it was the symbol of the heavens; rather, they imagined that the heavens are dome-shaped. Pre-historic peoples who knew the tent imagined the heavens as a tent. Man naturally grasps what he does not know through familiar data and analogy. That Christians and Jews regard God as the architect of the world is because they grasped the complex act of creation through analogy with the familiar act of building. Following Jencks's same argument, we should apparently arrive at the conclusion that architecture began because man decided to imitate God — and that the appearance of architecture preceded man and the building.
'Complexity' in architecture is, likewise, a necessity and an internal property of architecture, not necessarily a stylistic tendency. Jencks, by reducing the fundamental questions of architecture to a discussion of styles, in promoting them also diminishes the value of the new tendencies. Even on the influence of Einstein's theory on the formation of the new 'paradigm', he is not exact. As Jodidio observes, relativity — Einstein's central theory — was theorised at the time when modern architecture was at its peak; there is no reason to relate modern architecture to thought before Einstein. One may add that, as Giedion explained at length in Space, Time and Architecture, Cubist painting (and therefore Le Corbusier's architecture) drew on the thought of Einstein and on non-Euclidean mathematics.
Sorkin, criticising the Datascape and the contemporary metropolitan paradigm, says: 'The metropolis is avoidable. There is no need to value all the manifestations of today's chaotic, inhuman cities and to take them as the model of the city's form. The city cannot determine its own form free from the real needs of human beings and of the human will.'
Jencks's praise for the Bilbao Museum because its form can be read as a ship or as a reclining woman likewise looks shallow.
2 — Sorkin
Sorkin's position is wholly opposed to that of Jencks. He calls himself a utopist or believer in the ideal city, and so takes the human being and his planning for the future as his first principle. His imaginative designs for the future city, although they may look exaggerated, raise several fundamental architectural questions. The title of his lecture is The Future City. He presents his urban-design projects, all drawn by hand. Sorkin does not believe in imitating traditional patterns, since he holds that those patterns have become severed from their historical context and no longer have meaning or use. He considers the use of scientific paradigms in design to be incorrect, since it leads to the erosion of the necessary differences of life. Sorkin holds that today's architecture and urbanism, instead of being shaped by the patterns of 'globalisation', need strategies that protect cities against this phenomenon's negative effects. His clear alternative is the 'creation of artistic differences' rather than vernacular and typological variety. He is aware that his designs are impractical and exaggerated, but says retreat and adjustment are always easy; what matters is to find the principal solutions in urbanism and urban design.
Sorkin's city is, in truth, a kind of utopia of the third millennium. Although it uses very new technology and materials — automobiles running on hydrogen or solar fuel; building skins of natural plastic; soya fibre; and natural, agricultural systems for waste disposal — it has, like the utopias of the nineteenth century, fixed dimensions, defined boundaries, and buildings of limited height. In Sorkin's view, increasing the size of the city endangers democracy, since the relation between the citizens and city authorities becomes abstract and unreachable. Sociologically, he attends to today's questions, such as the cohabitation of groups that do not fit into the traditional family of father, mother and children, and has designed houses suitable for non-nuclear families. He also addresses migration from the countryside, working conditions in industry, and new modes of work.
Sorkin upsets the old notion of zoning and holds that, in today's world, where non-polluting industries are possible, all functions can sit side by side without a clear boundary. The fringe of the city, in turn, should be designed so that village migrants can live in it in the manner of their own villages.
In opposition to the very fragile and vulnerable system of today's city, he proposes self-sufficient cities not dependent on the countryside, since environmental technologies make it possible for an important part of energy production, waste disposal, and food preparation to be solved within the city and the neighbourhood — with no need for the outside.
3 — Jodidio
Jodidio also takes a position against Jencks's words. He says it is better that architecture, instead of the paradigm of the sciences, attend to the elementary, perennial questions of cost, site requirements and use. Architecture has not always gone hand in hand with science, and many of the most important architectural works have taken shape on the basis of a few simple principles. Criticising work like that of Frank Gehry he says: 'His chief concern is making a work of art; this is a personal, taste-based choice that may not be others' choice.'
He holds that, beyond the discussions of style and theory, the fact often hidden is that many architects today are first of all in pursuit of income and attention. In such a world, having no style is the best style. Jodidio praises the minimalist work of Richard Neutra, Tadao Ando, Rafael Moneo, and Álvaro Siza, and holds that these simple works form the most enduring kinds of architecture. In his view, very showy and self-displaying works are quickly tedious and outdated.
Jodidio does not reject creative, intelligent vernacularism, nor the use of the computer for creating new architectures, but holds that such works must be substantial and fundamental. Some of today's general needs — such as flexibility — are better met through a precise use of these technologies.
Jodidio's discussion is important because, in an age of one-sided separations of tendency and position, he has been able to bring together apparently disparate categories — art, environment, technology, urbanism, utopia, function and sociology — in one place.
The title of Jodidio's lecture, Architecture Now!5, is the title of two books he has published under that name. His latest book, Architecture Now! 2, is very much worth attention for the way it raises the issues above and introduces very recent projects, many of them unbuilt.
Footnotes
1. Charles Jencks, Philip Jodidio, Michael Sorkin. 2. The New Paradigm in Architecture. 3. Complexity-Organitech or Ecotech — Datascape — Blobs — Land Form Architecture — Cosmogenic Architecture — Enigmatic Signifier. 4. Architecture of the Jumping Universe. 5. Architecture Now! 2, TASCHEN, 2002.
