Against the heavy cost that society pays for architecture, what responsibility does architecture bear, and how does it take up that responsibility? That we call a work of architecture a “work” or an “opus” is full of meaning. In an earlier era, architects who humbly inscribed their names in a corner of the building they had made were recording it as their own act, so that along with the modest acknowledgment of those who praised the work they also took upon themselves responsibility for its shortcomings. In truth, the work itself — by announcing its attribution to a maker, famous or otherwise — reminds us of that maker's responsibility, and this is a tribute to a right that people hold with respect to art. People deserve to perceive goodness and beauty and to admire them.
A large share of a family's lifetime income is spent on providing and maintaining the houses, installations and buildings known as works of architecture. The hundreds of industrial branches that serve the provision of the materials and equipment these works require, the hundreds of thousands of jobs that run those industries, and the hundreds of thousands of further jobs that put the industry's products to work — all are the intermediate occupations of architecture. The varieties of introductory and advanced education that train these workers are components of an educational system whose ultimate aim is to support the domain of architecture. By this chain, society directs enormous forces and resources toward uses whose final end is architecture, and architecture is what gives those uses their identity. That identity is not something imposed on architecture from outside, or for the sake of ends outside architecture; it is the thing without which the great forces and resources society commits, in substance, to architecture — in order to build and adorn the space of its living — are wasted and spoiled rather than absorbed and digested into architecture. It is what without it the purposive, mutual connection of all these forces and resources breaks down, and the enormous cost society bears ends up yielding no return.
At the head of the institutions responsible for architecture stand the schools or faculties of architecture. These schools undertake to train pupils whose professional work should guide the investment society makes toward what is truly architecture, and should end in a product worthy of this great national, technical and human investment.
In completion of the school education, professional institutions prepare graduates of architecture schools for their professional role by teaching them the work of the profession. The responsibility of architecture schools and professional institutions — or of the institutional complex that takes on the training of architects as a whole — is as large and as heavy as the investment society places in this work. Does that institution fulfil its enormous role well?
The mechanism that has formed for regulating the relation between society's investment and architecture — in the shape of architecture schools and professional institutions — is a formal administrative mechanism. A formal administrative mechanism does not, on its own, carry sufficient guarantees for the proper and worthy discharge of its responsibility under all conditions. We ourselves see today that this mechanism does not play its part as it ought to. On one side, society, in order to build the space of its living (a vital need), is obliged to invest. On the other, that investment — through channels other than its ultimate relation to the profession of architecture, through the industrial system and the chain of jobs — has become so institutionalised that if the official institutions responsible for architecture also fail to play their role responsibly, it continues on its way and meets no obstacle. There must therefore be another mechanism which, under abnormal conditions, sets this relation in order — an order that draws from the identity of authentic architecture. Identity is not fashion or taste that follows the preference of persons or groups. Identity is that on which the being and non-being, the existence or non-existence, of what we are thinking depends. Identity is itself the essence. As the very making of the word tells us, architecture is architecture — whether old or new, whether Eastern or Western. To the extent that the word “architecture” is common across these varieties, its truth and identity are common too.
On the relation of a society to art and the conditions for achieving good art it has been said: “Not only must artists have noble motives; the society itself must also be noble. Art is neither obtained by intellectual effort, nor elucidated by precise speech. It is the essential and necessary product of power, nurtured only in the minds of successive generations, and in the end it comes to life under social conditions. The growth of social conditions is as slow as the growth of the talents that take shape within them. And again, good architecture is the expression of national life and character, and is brought into being by a prevailing, ardent national taste, or by the passion for beauty.”1 This saying, setting aside its slightly indignant tone, is historically correct. But societies have their highs and lows; and when the prevailing, ardent national taste or passion for beauty declines in a society, fresh forces set to work to raise it again. It is these forces that act beyond the schools and institutions, beyond the official institutions in general, when those institutions can no longer discharge their historical duties. The role of these forces is itself historical, and is not at odds with the general, long-term current of social movement.
Our architecture today stands in these conditions. There is a danger that building investment and all the complementary investments around it will grow even more accustomed than they already are to the absence of a responsible institution of architecture — that they will institutionalise that absence, so that all the forces and resources are consumed in the name of architecture while architecture itself is wholly absent from the scene. This is exactly the condition in which administrative and formal structures lose their efficacy, and one can no longer rely calmly on the gradual correction of affairs. In such conditions, the pure forces of architecture must cast off the formal moulds and uniforms and turn to pure activity. Pure activity, of course, does not at first have a perfected organisational form; more than anything else it depends on a passion for solidarity — not necessarily unanimity — and on the zeal of experienced forces who, in their sincerity, bring younger people along with them. This is not an optimistic fantasy. The endurance of good architects who, in the present unfavourable cultural and administrative conditions — conditions that have unknowingly turned almost every factor against architecture — have not surrendered to those conditions, and the eagerness of young people who, in the absence of effective and directing teaching and despite uncertain job prospects, knock on every door in the hope of finding a way to the light, all confirm that beside desire there is also endurance and effort.
These forces can take up the real responsibility of architecture. Taking up this responsibility is no mere courtesy. Giving identity to architecture — that is, turning what is done in the name of architecture into architecture — is not the direct demand of the market and the current of capital that operates in the name of architecture; but it is the need and the right of the society which supplies those resources. For this social need to be met, in the short term and under emergency conditions, someone must take up the responsibility of that identity-giving. And, fortunately, society is not wholly empty of these forces.
What can these forces do, and what must they do, to fulfil their architectural responsibility? For these forces, steadfastness in the correct exercise of their professional role takes precedence over every other role. Architecture is the direct product of professional work, and the most important duty of the country's good architects is to add to the stock of worthy architecture — which alone can serve as the model for young architects and as the means of educating public taste. But, alongside their professional work, they can take up the responsibility of the further professional training of young architects and teach them what architects need above everything else, and what the schools cannot give them: the belief that architecture really exists; the belief that architecture is a high art attainable only through hard effort; the belief that the general teaching of architecture is only a prelude to acquaintance with the world of architecture, and that to reach architecture itself one must learn it from an architect who has attained architecture — not merely by listening to his counsels and teachings, but by working alongside him — and the putting of these beliefs into practice.
It is not only today, and not only in our society, that the responsible forces and the real teachers of architecture have to be found among seasoned practitioners. Even at times when architecture schools are at the peak of their flourishing, the best teachers are still the practising architects, and the best teachings are still their teachings. Through their extraordinary work they pave a road on which the schools of architecture then travel for years.
1. Quoted from “Ruskin”, in Critics of Culture, Leslie Johnson, trans. Zia Movahed, Tarh-e Now Publishers, 1378 (1999), pp. 72-73.