Theory in the Criticism of Yokohama Port Terminal

The architects who critiqued the Yokohama Port Terminal project in the 18th issue of Memar magazine (autumn 2002) have not paid sufficient attention to the theoretical-philosophical aspect of the project and its spatial outcome. I believe that 60 years of academic architecture instruction in Iran has resulted in limiting architectural education to the physical aspects of building, both in the past and present. The consequence is the use of tools and the language of physical and everyday architectural assessment in place of the theoretical language of form and space; and since these two languages are not necessarily congruent, the theoretical perspective has been eliminated.

The issue of architecture poses the question of space, which is an integrated and comprehensive structure that is both the encompassing and organizing framework for all the problems of the project and, at the same time, the shaper of the thought of the present era.

Bringing order to the problems of a project and responding to needs pertains to the external (physical) aspect of architecture, which is also important in its own right. But the essence of architecture is fundamentally defined in relation to its second dimension — that is, creating the space of the present, which pertains to the internal aspect of architecture. This is a kind of insight that makes the emergence of creation in the past impossible and delays it to the present. Can the essence of a work be identified and discussed solely through a comprehensive examination of form and space? The quality of form and space depends to a great degree on technological possibilities and innovations. But fundamentally, it is directed toward the theoretical aspect of architecture — meaning the evolution of human perception of space and the relationships established among phenomena. Recognition and command of these relationships is what gives us the possibility of adopting a contemporary position in design; otherwise, the product of our work is merely adding one more meaningless work to the pile of meaningless works. Architecture is not timeless; rather, it contains the distillation of the thought and capabilities of its era.

Therefore, the architect's perception of the space of the present determines the internal conditions of architecture at the outset of design. But the issue is not limited to the starting point alone. In the process of working on an initial idea and adapting it to external conditions, a single and unique work may be produced. Judging a work is also a judgment about the degree of the architect's success — both in choosing the initial position and in the process of advancing it — in adapting to external conditions. To this end, the judge must also possess systematic and theorized thinking. Judgment acquires meaning only as the encounter of systematic ideas. Therefore, whenever one of the parties lacks a systematic position, reaching a conclusion is impossible, and the positions of both sides become incomprehensible to each other.

Judging an architectural work lies midway between purely philosophical-theoretical discussions, which are the province of philosophers, and purely spatial outcomes, which are the external result of architects' work. In other words, it is an architectonic concept about form and space, or "internal" discussions. Architectural theory discussions are of the abstract and conceptual variety — a step prior to scientific and physical discussions about architecture. Such debates cannot be affirmed or denied based on the external concerns of architecture oriented toward everyday reality — program, environment, capital, and client. In the language of geometry, these two discussions are not on the same plane. All the progress of Western architecture over the past 500 years, and especially since the second half of the twentieth century, has been focused on thought, reflection, and the articulation of views in this domain — from which we in the East have been heedless. The consequence is that over 150 years of exchanges, and throughout 60 years of academic architectural education in Iran, our architects have consistently adopted only the external reflections of those developments, and since our external circumstances differ from theirs, the possibility of pursuing a single idea and adapting it to external conditions has not been produced.

As an example, the proceedings of the critique session on the Yokohama Port Terminal, held with the participation of architects Alizadeh, Mirmiran, Shirdel, Afshar Naderi, and Hashemi, the magazine's editor-in-chief (Memar 18, autumn 1381), contains interesting and illuminating points about the manner of thinking of the architects under discussion.

Mirmiran says he considers two aspects for architecture: one is theoretical philosophy and the other is spatial outcome. But he speaks of theoretical philosophy as though it has nothing to do with architecture and is completely out of reach. In his words: "We can discuss it without insisting on judging it, since there is no necessity for that." Elsewhere, he also says: "Of course, there is not much need to prove whether these theoretical philosophies are right or wrong — we have nothing to do with whether they are good or bad." Well, if that is the case, then why does he raise it as one of the two aspects of the architecture discussion in the first place? He continues, after dismissing one of the two aspects he considers influential, to invoke skill as the main criterion for evaluating an architectural work. The reality is that skill operates only in the external domain and the physical quality of architecture, and it has no capacity to penetrate the internal layers. Of course, the architect must possess skill in design — this is the minimum requirement — but skill in design does not necessarily guarantee the functioning of the internal domain of architecture.

The next misunderstanding concerns the definition of volume and its dimensions in the general reality of the surrounding world, and also its definition in conceptual discussions, and the conflation of the two. As a result, we call every volumetric phenomenon three-dimensional, which is a layperson's engagement with architecture. When we manipulate cross-sections and alter them, we encounter more than three dimensions. This is not something strange or sleight of hand. It suffices to glance at the mathematics of fractals to encounter dimensions of 2.7, 2.2, and 2.4 as well — creating a specialized field for working and thinking about space, just as in perspective two parallel lines meet at infinity, and on that basis a great intellectual system served for 500 years as a source of thought and theoretical reflection about space.

Alizadeh's problem is of the same type. He says: "I fundamentally have no sensitivity toward theories; for me, results matter." Again, external reflection. Should we mock Le Corbusier, the most important architect of the twentieth century — saying the old man had gone mad in his later years and was talking nonsense about the negation of gravity in the internal discussions of architecture — and worse yet, Einstein, who listened to his nonsense? It seems to me the same misunderstanding about dimensions has occurred here for Alizadeh.

Shirdel's talk about the negation of taste and the "architecture of architecture" — which Libeskind formulated on the basis of quotations and documents from the theories of Giulio Camillo, a sixteenth-century Italian architect — and the discussion of the negation of choice within the framework of "undecidability" are interesting. The issue consists of creating a comprehensive system from within which various architectural projects are extracted. Thus, taste, choice, and decision-making become dependent on the generative possibilities and formal limitations of this overarching system. This has only one weakness at the initial step: the choice and exercise of taste in creating the machine or primary system. After this stage, architectural works are born from the logic of the machine, and the exercise of taste and choice is reduced to a minimum.

However, since there is no escaping the presence of choice or taste at the very first step, the machine becomes temporalized, and its range becomes dependent on changes in the architect's taste and the domain of choice — which belong to the sphere of external concerns. This is not a flaw but a natural characteristic, arising from the passage of time and the change of theories. The problem with art is that if it does not change with time, it becomes monotonous, abstract, and disconnected from the constantly changing and restless world outside.

It is perhaps for precisely this reason that Eisenman, in his latest lecture in Berlin, returns once again to the idea and reaffirms its importance, thereby negating the "undecidability" that Shirdel refers to. The idea requires decision. But on the whole, the "architecture of architecture" that Libeskind formulated is admirable for having created a conceptual space and a distanced view of the mechanisms of architecture, and for posing a comprehensive question for architects — namely the design of the architectural machine before undertaking the design of architectural projects.