The Last Taboo: The Issue of Progress

In this competition, works first had to be assessed without regard to the weakness of visual documentation, the visual impact of the surrounding environment, the dimensions of the project, and solely on account of their architectural merits. Precisely because the visual impact of a large project situated in a beautiful environment and presented with excellent drawings and photographs is many times greater than a work that possesses none of the above advantages.

Furthermore, some works, by virtue of the symbolic nature of architecture, possess a distinctive and prominent external form, while others that have paid more attention to space than to volume are not well represented in photographs and are, as photographers put it, not photogenic. In assessing the works, we had to be mindful that the mechanism of perceiving architecture differs from the visual perception of photographs that show only selected angles of a building. Therefore, one cannot judge solely on the basis of images.

On the other hand, we had to take care that works with a very sophisticated appearance, grounded in meanings and interesting theories, did not lead our judgment astray. In competitions, some architects present highly attractive explanations about their ideas and metaphors. In most cases, these serve the role of packaging, as in the marketing of commercial products. A building is wrapped in a shroud of complex meaning in order to appear more acceptable. Of course, this is a very effective tool, and the art of advertising is well aware of it. It is said that such-and-such a shampoo is made from minerals and a combination of vitamins and hair-strengthening agents. This statement alone is enough that the buyer, regardless of whether the above claim is true or not and regardless of whether the added ingredients of the shampoo are absorbed by the skin, goes directly for the advertised product. There are also well-known architects who benefit from this method, resorting to meanings that have found no real embodiment in their work or that are fundamentally not considered to be of architectural value. Setting all this aside, the argument that understanding a work requires precise knowledge of its principles, and that architectural space and architectural writing are a single, inseparable phenomenon, is an invention of recent decades whose validity is very much in doubt. Today, architectural discourse is disseminated primarily through writing, and naturally the extent, intensity, and speed of dissemination of a discourse plays a direct role in legitimizing it. This is why fashion trends, regardless of the personal resistance of individuals at the outset of their spread, take hold and rapidly change the standards of beauty.

One of the great taboos in judging this kind of competition is the reputation and prestige of the designer. Everyone knows that even prominent artists produce works that are merely mediocre, or distinctive yet devoid of value. On the other hand, it is possible that a young and unknown artist may be the creator of a valuable project. Declaring a well-known architect the winner is far easier than elevating a young architect who may not succeed at all in their next work. Whoever sits in the position of judge must demonstrate great courage and independence of thought so as not to fall under the influence of the authority and reputation of a famous architect. Of course, the issue does not end with courage alone. As was mentioned, the amount of information disseminated about a particular tendency greatly influences its acceptance. For example, it is natural that judging a painter based on only one abstract painting bearing their signature would be difficult; however, evaluating a painting that has been separated from the body of work belonging to one period of the painter's career is much easier. One of the important paths of criticism is evaluating a work in relation to the professional-artistic process of its creator. In judging, even this possibility does not exist.

Another point I wish to raise here concerns the material and spatial limitations of a project, which I also alluded to indirectly in the context of several architects' works. It is natural that a small work inherently demands more limited creativity compared to a large work. Likewise, an industrial building, compared to a cultural complex, generally has fewer opportunities for engaging with aesthetics. This issue is well established and recognized in other arts, with the exception of architecture. No critic expects a painter working in watercolor to achieve the same diversity of tonal values, contrasts, and colors as an oil painting. In music too, the range of a piano's notes cannot be compared with a reed flute or violin. In architecture as well, the designer and even the critic must recognize the value of limitations and accept them as characteristics — not weaknesses — of a work. Therefore, projects that have specific limitations must necessarily be discussed and assessed with a different perspective.

And finally, the last and most important taboo was the issue of progress — which, after all the points I have discussed above were raised, came to the fore. If we assumed that the works had more or less equally fulfilled their primary obligations, we had to ask what criterion remained by which one work could be evaluated above another. Naturally, the only field that remains beyond the intrinsic values of a work relates to the questions that the architect — guided by their professional outlook and by the general principles of architecture — has posed for themselves, and has sought to answer through the work. I mean the role that the architect has played in the advancement of architectural culture. If this is not the case and no evolution has taken place, then the differences remain merely at the level of variety, and works cannot be ranked in terms of value.

In the opinion of this writer, the issue of progress as a value is one of the most important and at the same time most distorted issues in architecture, and it is for this reason that in the remainder of this article I address it in discussion.

Progress in Science versus Architecture

In the sciences, progress is clearer than in architecture. It suffices for a new problem to be posed and for someone to find an answer to it. The validity of this answer or solution endures until the problem is posed in a new way or a more correct answer is found. Today, many avant-garde tendencies attempt to extend this formula to architecture and to regard the mere finding of a new solution to a new problem as progress. The architect in this situation has set a goal of their own devising and has also determined the path to reaching it. In the realm of methods, Eisenman has been more active than other architects in his pseudo-scientific efforts. Eisenman has used linguistics, mathematics, biology, and other sciences in his works. Of course, this usage has mostly been formal and superficial, solely aimed at achieving new and unexpected architectural forms, and a deep, meaningful relationship between these works and the related sciences has never been established. On the other hand, in the sciences, studies proceed from the world of reality toward the world of abstraction (with the exception of sciences like mathematics that exist entirely within the domain of abstraction). Scientific laws that are formulated to explain the phenomena of the world are abstract and hold true in a parallel world that is a reflection of the real world. Architecture, conversely, proceeds from abstraction — that is, from design and drawing — toward the world of reality, which is the building and life within it; and its laws too must find validation in reality.

The experience of architecture in the second half of the twentieth century has proven that even famous architects make errors in this regard. For example, works that claim to be functional — although having won the propaganda war and come to be known as a type of architecture called "Functional" — are in fact not functional by numerous criteria. That is to say, the abstract laws that were supposed to guarantee their responsiveness to practical needs have in practice not worked. The relationship between science and life is a different one and, in many cases, indirect. In the early seventeenth century, mathematicians were occupied with integral and logarithmic methods of calculation. They were unaware at that time of the vast applications of these calculations that would be discovered later. Throughout the Middle Ages, and then in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, scientists of mechanics attended to problems of structural stability in buildings purely out of their own intellectual curiosity, and until the mid-eighteenth century, no practical use had been made of these studies.

It is natural that if this were not the case, medicine would not progress. If all physicians were to attend to the practice of healing, new methods of treating diseases would never be discovered. In any case, architecture, in this respect, bears a resemblance to medicine, and since it deals with everyday life, it cannot concern itself with problems whose practical benefits may only become apparent several centuries later. Even if such work were to be done, it would be better confined to theory, exhibitions, computer reconstructions, and similar methods of presentation. One cannot easily use human beings, like laboratory guinea pigs, for abstract experiments aimed at a very distant future. Because these kinds of works, focused purely on progress, require a specialist audience; there is no need for them to be built. They are masterpieces of architectural imagery. It is for this very reason that the architects of the Archigram group consciously designed works that were not only never built but never even claimed to be buildable. The domain of the Archigram group was the magazine and the exhibition. The cultural value of their work is, in any case, undeniable. The problem began when such laboratory works were actually built in various corners of the world for touristic reasons.

The Obsession with Progress

Today, the preoccupation with progress in architecture has become an obsession. Architects, more than the goal of fulfilling their designated purpose, are concerned with expanding the dimensions of aesthetics and architectural concepts. Buildings have lost their totality as works and are presented merely as stages in an architectural quest; the evaluation of buildings, too, is possible only within this process of seeking. The reduction of a work to a document (a stage in a research process) — which has long been an issue in painting — is not easily justifiable in architecture. In painting, a person like Hans Hartung could devote his entire life to investigating the effect of brushstrokes on the painting canvas and through this display the values of spontaneity, the crystallization of the pure energy of hand movement, and beauty arising from the unconscious. Architecture is not like this. In this profession, every building, however much it may arise from prolonged research and even express a new problem, is in and of itself a finished work, and one cannot delegate the exploitation of its formal and aesthetic values to the knowledge of prior and subsequent works or even the design process of the work itself.

Today, presenting the design process of a project in the form of visual diagrams has itself become a value that in many cases has a decisive influence on whether a work is accepted or rejected. There are misunderstandings in this regard. First, the majority of human memories are visual, and especially ideas expressed through simple geometric drawings, however incorrect, are accepted far more readily than complex ideas. Second, the design process, for the person who is to live in the completed building, is merely irrelevant. Architects who place great value on "process" as a value, or those like Zaha Hadid who create independent, fantastical, and more beautiful artworks from the step-by-step phases of their designs than from their actual built works, have in truth propagated a kind of sleight-of-hand and sophistry in architecture. It suffices to look at the computer studies of Greg Lynn and McInturff at the Hydrogen House near Vienna. One of the reasons for the success of such architects is the simplicity of their ideas. These works, although they claim complexity, are in fact very simple. The illusion created by publicity prevails over reality.

Architects who champion progress and complexity have in many cases reduced architecture to mere geometric alignment. In these works, the geometry is complex, but the architectural work — stripped of its thousands of attributes — is very simple and primitive. It is natural that designing a spectacular and eye-catching project under conditions where only a limited number of the factors influencing architecture have been addressed is a relatively easy task. On the other hand, it is also understandable that no work of architecture is capable of devising a novel and unprecedented response to hundreds of architectural parameters within a single work. Only historical works have possessed the ability to respond in their time to economic, social, psychological, climatic, technical, and other concerns. In such architecture, space and architectural elements emerge from a gradual evolutionary process spanning thousands of years and carry within themselves millennia of accumulated knowledge.

Today, spaces and architectural elements are, under the pretext of progress, created suddenly from nothing, and there is no control over their social and psychological consequences — as if a drug were released on the market without investigating its side effects and without repeated testing. Today, even the architects themselves in some cases claim that they have only controlled the process of creating space and had no definitive conception of the building's final form from the outset. In such invented spaces, very little knowledge may have been applied. For example, I refer to the windows of the Arab World Institute in Paris, by Jean Nouvel. The inventive light screens of the main facade, created with inspiration from Islamic motifs but employing several thousand diaphragms sensitive to sunlight, were designed to, theoretically, regulate the amount of natural light in relation to changes in ambient light. In practice, the simultaneous opening and closing of several thousand diaphragms creates such a commotion that the building's administrators have been forced to abandon the entire system.

Meanwhile, a traditional window, by virtue of drawing on an experience of several thousand years, never encounters such problems. Today, after a century and a half since the creation of skyscrapers, it has been proven that disease-causing agents exist in many office and residential high-rises that only today's technology can partially control. Today, SBS (Sick Building Syndrome) and BRI (Building Related Illness) have alarmed everyone.

What Is Progress?

Given the points made, these questions arise for me: What is meant by progress? Is progress the sole value? Does progress mean the same thing everywhere in the world? As I said before, progress in science and technology has a clear meaning. In the past, too, progress in architecture had a clear meaning. Perspective, whose principles painters and architects used for centuries — even those who in the modern era undertook the negation of perspective did so consciously and with full knowledge of its principles. Structure as the sole ornament of a building, which was put forth in the eighteenth century, was also a form of progress that influenced two full centuries of architectural development. Fundamentally, progress occurs when a new achievement is offered to humanity and this achievement then disseminates and comes into use by all — exactly like an invention, like electric lighting or the vacuum cleaner. Through progress in knowledge, culture grows richer day by day. Thus, progress must lead to the enrichment of humanity and civilization, not the reverse.

The obsession with progress has reached a point where each group achieves progress in some area and creates a style or uses a particular geometry, and immediately others' use of their achievement becomes forbidden, and a kind of self-censorship takes hold. Other architects feel compelled to pursue a new subject and no longer set foot in previously explored territory, lest they be condemned as imitators and followers. Being original has become a calamity. In such circumstances, each new search not only fails to contribute to the richness and breadth of the creative field but, by reducing the possible grounds for creativity, actually fosters the impoverishment of architecture. Today, most usable geometries — from fold and fractal and Mobius to topology and anamorphic forms — have been exploited. The course of architectural history has proven that when styles reach their perfection and artists succumb solely to the temptation of originality, they become entangled in exaggerated and complex stylistic mannerisms. A period of decline arrives. It is for this reason that in the eighteenth century, Winckelmann and a number of others called for a return to the origins.

Progress as Obsession

What is certain is that searching, finding, and then abandoning is not progress. A work as a mere document of research is not architecture either. The theory of the architectural project as the sole purpose of the project — which the group Coop Himmelb(l)au champions — is also questionable. An idea that does not spread and does not continue in the work of subsequent generations is not considered progress. How is it that the Postmodern style, with all its claims that it was going to change the architecture of the world and of future generations, vanished from the world within a few years, and Deconstructivism lasted only as long as a new fashion trend? One of the reasons is that in these works, progress has become the cardinal principle. Phenomena are not examined for their intrinsic values but are assessed in an evolutionary chain.

Self-referential and intellectualist architectures flee from any assessment by general and external criteria. In the new era, many styles, with claims of freedom of thought, creativity based on sensory perception, and artistic rule-breaking, have surrendered themselves to pseudo-scientific and mechanical processes. Unity and coherence of style — which is a minor issue — has in many cases led to the corruption of the fundamental principles of architecture, which is a major issue. Things have reached a point where attention to human needs and the principle of usefulness appear shameful. Great architects, with the license of theory and art, grant themselves the right to disregard the simple and basic needs of the user. Many famous architects face criticism and even formal complaints from their own clients. The cinema complex UFA 385, a work by Coop Himmelb(l)au in Dresden, is among the notable works that has encountered thousands of functional problems. This complex has even been severely criticized by a group of critics for its lack of coherence in principles and outcomes.

Conclusion

In any case, the issue of progress is one of the most important issues in architecture. Progress means anticipating future developments, finding architectural expression for them, and also building the future through posing new needs, new fields of inquiry, and creativity. Without progress, architecture is reduced to the level of fashion or at best to style. The point here is that we must prevent the issue of progress from becoming an obsession or an unavoidable compulsion and the sole goal of architecture. Fundamental transformations require the right time, special conditions, and a particular ground for crystallization, and one cannot expect architecture to be completely and radically revised every year or two. Furthermore, absolutizing the value of progress and invention may, in many cases, place architects in a position where they unwittingly work toward impoverishing and constraining architectural culture.