Chapter Four: CONVERGENCE TOWARDS THE TYPE
1. Meaning and habit
A Classical architecture provides an instrument which is capable of expressing both the unity and diversity of experience in a society. Due to the limited number of element-combinations which it uses, it is simple enough to describe what is collectively true by providing recognizable thematic recurrences which are expressed in all the buildings which are produced (using that typical set). At the same time it is also complex enough to allow the identification of particular contexts within that collectivity. It is a theme with variations.
Every individual project plays out this theme (using the typical set) and in doing so automatically links itself to the rest of society without sacrificing its own authenticity to its time and place. The initial flexibility of the Classical type ensures that there are always possible variations that can be played out in unique circumstances.
The characteristic unity of a society can be seen and touched in the recurrent use of the typical elements of a classical architecture throughout many buildings. In this sense architecture has a public meaning which transcends the utilitarian dimension of built form and achieves that of a symbol which signifies the general and the particular of the public dimension. It can speak of all places or differentiates this place from that place.
Meaning in architecture is intimately linked to the repetition or recurrence of architectural elements. It is built up out of a series of confirmed expectations about the probable characteristics that each part of the environment will have. It is a form of prediction about circumstances for which all information is not available. A better than random rate of correct guesses about the likely characteristics of an unseen or partially seen object based on what is already known is a functional definition of the meaning of that object for that observer. If, on the other hand, an observer is unable to predict the characteristics of an object based on previously acquired knowledge, then that object is functionally meaningless.
Meaning is a relation between what is known and what is assumed to be the case.
Architecture has to represent the differences between one place and another using the typical set of element-combinations at its disposal. But in a Classical architecture these differences can be seen as predictable variations on the typical set that can be extrapolated and understood from what is known about the circumstances of the building. That is from the complexity of its context. No one thing can be said to have meaning simply because it exists, for meaning does not reside anywhere -it cannot be localized in the form of a thing. Like architecture itself, meaning is a relationship between things. To use a phrase from Gregory Bateson, meaning is the 'message in circuit' within the environment. The same definition of meaning recurs at the most detailed level of architecture. The parts of a building are meaningful to the extent that their character and arrangement is predictable in terms of the other parts of the building.
However, the character or placing of elements together in a building is never totally predictable since the elements of the typical set are not 'things' but patterns or themes for which there is no precisely-engineered shape. It only has a probable configuration. Equally, in the act of incorporating a conventional element into a building, the element is inflected and adapted to that particular context. It is customized to meet new circumstances. The theme is embedded (and, in fact realized) in its variation as the plot is embedded in its playing out, as the genotype is embedded in its phenotype.
The typical set is an assimilation of learned experience. It is a formalized habit which is accumulated out of the recursive action of the typological process on previous experience. In assimilating these types or habits, the mind inevitably generates meaning which can be regarded as a function of typological activity. It creates in them the basis for expectations and predictions at all levels of formal activity. This not only applies at the denotative level of meaning but at the connotative. The first defines a predictable relation between the elements of the formal language, while the second defines the relation between that language and what it represents (the 'what is 'meant). In the connotative dimension the relation of probability is established by the recurrence of particular forms in particular contexts. An expectation is built up about what a particular combination might mean and therefore what it will probably continue to mean.
At its most fundamental level therefore and as a product of its functioning and its structure the mind by coordinating different representations of the same experience imbues matter with meaning.
The continued production of new buildings, each of which is a variation or 'distortion of the architectural Type, produces a continual reorganization of architecture. Each of these new and to some extent unique buildings tend to widen the range of recurrent element-combinations which define the character and limits of the prevailing Type. This flow of differences into the architectural repertoire is potentially disruptive of the classified routines which make up the Type. Every one of them is a slight or radical distortion of its statistically probable and conventional forms and produces a slight shift in the character of the typical set over time. One can see in this that the presence of the Type as a reliable set of formal routines will generate versions of itself which are - by communication and exchange between architects – ‘re-called’ or assimilated (minus their most circumstantial features) into the Type. For an architectural Type to remain flexible and uniform (reliable) requires that this input of new buildings should be thoroughly condensed to its most basic similarities. In cybernetic terms, this is the negative feedback of the Type (reduction of differences) while the input of new buildings produces an amplification of differences (positive feedback). The interaction of these two functions maintains the architectural system in the same relation to its environment. Negative feedback in architectural terms (legitimate, permissible and meaningful combinations), is a control function which prevents the whole system from dispersing itself into an infinite number of different formal characteristics. By re-calling these building solutions back into the Type through the medium of exchange and imitation, the Type conserves typological characteristics and prevents architecture from being too responsive to local circumstances.
Since architecture is subject to an unending stream of unique contexts which it must represent, this control function of the type provides that necessary 'distance' between architecture and context - a zone of reflection - which protects accumulated experience.
2. The Platonic Analogy
There is a similarity in all this between the Style - building relation in architecture and that of the Ideal - Real in the Platonic sense.
One may consider the building to be the real and the particular while the Style refers to the 'universal' - that form from which the buildings derive their meaning. In a Platonic sense one can say that all buildings by their very existence as imperfect or improbable combinations of the typical set - customized to suit circumstances – ultimately refer to that 'more perfect' and 'more true' reality of the architectural Type – the Ideal. Because buildings respond to different times and places they must inevitably be different - they must to some extent be improbable relative to the Style. They must distort the statistically probable and virtual forms of the Style in order to be in the world.
The Platonic analogy here between Style and building is useful up to a point in describing relations between the particular and the universal. However the analogy becomes nonsense if, as in the original Platonic sense the architectural Type is taken to be a real and ‘more perfect thing’ locatable in some dimension or other. It is not. It is simply a statistical relation between real things - namely buildings. That relation - the collective level of experience - is only discernible as a statistical concept, for instance, how many buildings utilize a common set of forms and combine them in a similar way. The Type can only refer to what is collectively true amongst the aggregate of individual buildings which make up architectural production - its most representative and essential characteristics. Unlike the Platonic Ideal, which in its drive for certainty, reifies a group of similarities into a ‘thing’, the architectural Type exists in the world as a group of forms dispersed amongst the elements of an aggregate of buildings. The architectural Type is immanent to those works. It is not a separate entity.
The myth, the Type and the genotype remain, like the Ideal or the universal dispersed among their constituents. They are simply names or classifications of characteristics to be found within a large number of individual forms.
3. The Devaluation of the Type.
The greater the number of combinations that can be drawn from the Type, the less predictable, and therefore the less reliable will it be as a program for future action. With the diversification of the socioeconomic system towards a more plural organizational state, there is an exponential growth in the number of possible combinations of form. This devalues the Type as a resource by widening the spectrum of element-combinations within it and giving it much more varied characteristics. It loses its clear identity. Eventually this will lead to a complete breakdown of the Type as a reference point for individual actions. In an extreme case, the result will be that in the design of every new building the architect will have to start 'from scratch' in evaluating the mass of forms available from past experiments. Design activity will be reduced to a process of trial and error methods in order to find reliable solutions. In an extreme case like this, even buildings which face similar tasks will solve them in different ways. In period like this there is a lack of adequately evaluated knowledge about past experience and this will express itself physically in an obvious lack of uniformity in architectural production.. The de-valuation of the Type through diversification of its characteristics will lead to a point where it can offer several different and equally valid answers to each problem of representation. In effect it will have ceased to be a single Type.
In historical terms there will be many attempts to stave off this crisis of meaning by consciously re-typing architectural forms back into some more singular (and theoretically permanent) groups of characteristics. This is the basis of architectural 'Revivals'. It is the attempt to re-establish the predictive value of the Type by re-normalizing architecture around fixed and conventional combinations of form. What is sought is a return to the uniformity and clarity of the Classical state of architecture but in the midst of socioeconomic conditions which cannot possibly allow that to take place. Socioeconomic conditions do not determine what an architecture does, only what it cannot do and in the case of more plural economic organization architecture cannot become unified.
Socioeconomic diversification increases the number of groups of buildings which have different characteristics. This stems from the increased number of commissioning sources that arise during such periods. For instance the emergence of a middle class parallel to existing institutions of state, monarchy or Church.
Faced with what they perceive as the gradual dissolution of the clarity and homogeneity of a classical architecture during such periods, architects may attempt a conscious re-typing of its forms which will produce as in the 18th century, a Neo-Classical architecture founded on the most precise and even archeological statements of form. Looking back on these inevitably transient constructions, they can be regarded as heroic and yet tragic period in architectural history. They are ultimately futile attempts to haul architecture back up to a classical state by its own bootstraps in the face of an environment which cannot allow this to happen.
4. Diversification
This re-typing of architecture in the 18th century would soon be overtaken by events and the revived classical type which briefly established itself would in turn be de-valued as the period of socioeconomic diversification gained momentum.. The increase in the number of commissioning sources which was brought about by the advent of an industrial-capitalist class led to that diversity of context which shattered the Neo-Classic hope of serene uniformity of type. One can view the process of diversification in this way: if one institution commissions ten buildings and ten individuals commission one building each (all of which are theoretically the same function), the context and therefore the characteristics of these two groups will differ from one other. As the unity of the single commissioning source over time provided a dimension of uniformity to which architecture responded, so, with the massive extension of entrepeneurs, the middle class and new institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, the previous uniformity of style would automatically be dissolved. As always, the vagaries of the environment is an inescapable condition for any cultural system.
The organization of a Plural socioeconomic state simply does not lend itself to the establishment of a single architectural type.
Neo-Classicism in this sense is not just the attempt to establish the purest forms of Graeco-Roman architecture, it is an ideological phase of an architecture (any architecture), which must take place with the disintegration of the prevailing type. It is an attempt to stave off the historical inevitability. By cutting away the formal accretions of decoration and distortion which are the historical reality in the evolution of an architecture, neo-classicism in its general attempts to perform the task of essentializing history and memory. But the result can only be an artificial construct for there is no 'original' or ideal' form to be found at the end of this process. What is actually taking place in the midst of these apparently rational archeological researches is not the discovery but the construction of a supposedly ideal form. There could never be a point in such a process when it could realistically be said that the essence of architecture had been found for there is none. The truth is that there never was a ‘golden age’ of architecture. The unity and clarity which is presumed to be an attribute of such an age is a perspective illusion which arises when one looks back at the past. A past which is in fact a condensed and censored version of what is most valuable in the present anarchic state of things. It is what, in its ideological simplicity, could bring some order to the present and the future. As always however, the coherent illusion as against the flux of the present evokes a sense of loss.
5. Chance in the History of architecture.
Until there is a period of continuous integration of the socioeconomic conditions of a society, there will be no emergence of a unified architecture. Only with that concentration of commissioning sources will there be a basic level of similarity among a large number of buildings. Large enough that is for the collective typological process to focus on and reinforce it into a general self-sustaining set of characteristics.
The strengthening of relations between different cultural systems, say into the form of increasing dependencies between one another - their coordination - is paralleled in architecture by an increase in recurrent elements. It opens up again the possibility of exchange taking place between different works of architecture; very different buildings using the same elements. No amount of conscious re-typing in the form of revivals or movements can, by itself stabilize architecture around a clearly defined uniformity of style. If it happens, it will be temporary and due entirely to social circumstances.
The architectural debates of the 18th and 19th centuries and the production of polemical works of architecture as models, did not automatically re-establish a coherent architectural type which came to be known as the Modern Movement. All this ideological effort and architectural production merely offered sets of characteristics which might or might not be taken up as a possibility for a future global type. Indeed the Plural socioeconomic conditions of the 19th century required the continuous creation of difference, turmoil, if you like and the production of the new. Nor can one say that the emergent Corporate Capitalism of the 20th century somehow 'selected' a particular type as its theme or symbol. At the collective level of society there is 'no one' to carry out that task. Architecture and the prevailing socioeconomic system are separate but parallel systems.
From the point of view of architecture, the particular socioeconomic state of a society - its degree of integration or plurality - is quite random. Equally from the point of view of society, the particular degree of uniformity of architecture or its current characteristic forms are a product of its own history and cannot be determined by analysing society. The architecture of a particular period is not directly related or coordinated to the state of society nor can it be described as the most appropriate form for the society in which it arises. It is a parallel development having its own history, formative rules and characteristic forms. A change of state from, say Plural to Integrated socioeconomic conditions simply changes the parameters within which a particular architecture will operate and that architecture is simply the one available to it at the time. New architectures are not created for new social or economic conditions. Existing architectures with their historically-derived forms are subject to different constraints.
6. Rules about Rules.
The apparent change of goals during the Involutionary period - from the pragmatics of producing a risk-free architectural routine to more abstract concerns such as the redefinition of the language itself - do not involve a new or different process. It is indeed the same process of selection and combination but played out in new circumstances - the existence and dominance of a particular architectural type. The formation of this new level of activity must still concern itself with the task of providing the most reliable set of representational instruments. There is no escaping this primary task of representing particular contexts with a general symbolic language. What happens in the post-classic phase is that the elements and rules of combination of the typical set are being subject to continual clarification. In this 'bureaucratic' situation it is not enough to say what these rules are in order to assure their correct usage, but as an added factor of reliability there must be rules for the operation of those rules. This is the Involutionary response to the totally pre-determined nature of the architectural environment at the time. In this situation typological activity not only transforms the existing repertoire by eliminating different ways of doing the same thing but fixes exactly how the rules of combination may be applied. It creates meta-rules which further close off the possibility of the improbable combination ever arising.
One finds a curious paradox in such situations that in order to clarify form one must elaborate on it. Thus in certain periods in the history of architecture, what may appear to be the most complex formal or iconic system is, in fact an attempt to clarify its quite 'simple' underlying order but within the most coercive constraints. Constraints which are not in this case socioeconomic (a continuous period of integration) but are products of the state of the system itself: the complete hegemony of a single architectural type. Typological activity is restricted in its possibilities for condensing differences into similarities because the repertoire is already homogeneous. It is already what the goals of the system demanded: a classical architecture. Therefore the result of the Involutionary period is not only a reduction of the number of possible variations on the classical type but by default the generation of a secondary level of architectural forms which elaborate on those few highly-charged and inarticulate elements which remain within the typical set. For architecture therefore, the Involutionary phase brings about an era of increasing decoration of buildings. This decoration is not the conscious addition of the 'beautiful' to the form of buildings but is fundamentally the classification of those forms. It is, in other words, the classification of form by form. Without adding to the typical set nor exchanging its purified elements for others (it is now so deeply programmed into architectural behaviour), typological activity is required to clarify these forms by inscribing them with a name, or rather tries to make them name themselves. It is important to regard the 'purification' of the elements of a classical architecture and the emergence of decoration as two sides of the same coin. This can be more fully appreciated if one remembers that the actions of the typological process ultimately result in the compression of variations and diversity out of the set. In compressing or condensing the already highly-condensed forms of the classical set, the typological process forces them to extrude that remaining diversity in the form of decoration. Decoration is, therefore an epiphenomenon of this process of continual condensation.
7. Compression and Condensation
Architecture will remain at the same level of uniformity, for as long as the sources of commissioning power remain in the same relationship to each other.. Where these sources are diverse, the typological process, will carry out its work of purification or essentializing within each distinct style. It will however be thwarted in its drive to fuse these differences into a single routine for the whole of production. It cannot represent this fluid and ambiguous organisational structure with a single pure style for it must remain in the same analogical relationship with its society. This is not to say that architecture will at all times be symmetrical with the prevailing social organization. Clearly this is seldom the case but the lack of synchronization between an architecture and its society is usually a matter of time-lag rather than some divergence of structure. In the Plural society the search for the ideal style goes on but it does so along several different highways which have branched off from a single route laid down in the past.
The emergence of an ultimate irreducible style comes about with the integration of society into a tight hierarchy of interdependent institutions. In this historical situation architecture is allowed to maximize the effects of the unfettered activity of the architectural code. The 'program's' goal of maximum uniformity in architectural production reaches its practical upper limit. Practical in the sense that complete uniformity is an impossible condition because of the stream of different buildings which must be continually assimilated into the program. In reality the code is always prevented from reaching its full integrative potential. There are, or have been societies whose degree of integration is so great they seem to be one enormous organism. In this book, the term used for such an extreme state is the 'Theocratic State' and its effects on architecture will be discussed later.
With the arrival of a Developmental phase and the establishment of a classical architecture there will still remain a tension between the great number of things which must be represented and the inherent impossibility of ever doing so with a uniform architectural vocabulary. It is still necessary for this great uniformity to shift around in a futile attempt to find the perfect formula which will suffice for all contexts both now and in the future. The ideal remains as elusive as ever.
If the search for the ideal style ends up in practice with the unification of architecture around a limited set of combinations, then it might seem that with the architecture of the Integrated state one has reached an 'Ideal Style'. Of course, this is not the case. The same criteria apply: the Classical phase is simply a measurable, though not absolute similarity between buildings while the Ideal Style – complete uniformity and predictable relations between buildings - as with all ‘ideal’ projections, remains an implicit goal - not a thing which can be realized in the real world. The fact that to all intents and purposes the goal seems to have been reached in the (almost) total uniformity in architecture does not alter the fact that this great uniformity is still dispersed amongst a great number of different buildings. It still requires a creative act of imagination to conceive of the essential character of this architecture separate from all the differences within which it is embedded. No architecture can close off the stream of differences which flow into it or refute the fact that at its base it is a multitude of individual and necessarily different activities. No building can ever be context-free. It must in some sense be different from others.
At the initial stages of this Classical phase in architecture clusters of different styles are reduced to their component parts. Similarities which were not visible at the level of the styles as unique whole routines are discovered at a 'molecular' level of their many different buildings. In order to conceive of this process one can imagine that these groups of buildings are subject to a more 'intense' kind of typological analysis and a more rigorous deconstruction of their characteristics. There is an effort to integrate their differences, for if the Classical Style stands for anything its stands for a high degree of assimilated experience abstracted from broadest range of contexts in society as a whole. No architectural style can ever contain this degree of comprehensiveness. For this reason one cannot consider the Classical Style to be the product of an exclusive selection process which takes up one style in preference to all others and generalizes it into a global architecture. The Style is a thorough fusing of the characteristics of all current styles available at the time. It is only in the fusion of several styles that the uniform architecture of a society can hope to be a highly predictive instrument capable of ensuring certainty of response in any future context. The organic unity and flexibility of a Classical architecture can only be ensured by the deconstruction and analysis of recurrences between its antecedent styles. What at one level seem like irreconcilable differences of character among a group of co-existing styles, at another more comprehensive and more fundamental level can be as essential similarities.
In this sympathetic environment, the architectural code is able to compress most of the vestiges of contextual associations out of the styles. It is this context which differentiates one style from another. Since society has in a sense become unified in its internal relations and since one can consider it to be the 'context of all contexts' there is an environmental 'demand' for integration of architecture to the same degree of comprehensiveness.
The metonymic functioning of the typological process selects parts of the autonomous styles which exist during an Evolutionary period and fuses them into a metaphor for the whole of architectural production. It institutes a new level of architectural activity – a truly comprehensive level. Each of the diverse styles of the Evolutionary period represented a particular geographical or discursive constituency, yet within the broad field of architectural production as a whole each was limited in its area of application. There were always other possible answers to the same questions. The Classical style on the other hand which arises during the Developmental period can truly be regarded as the collective level of the whole of architectural production.
The Classical Style is a metaphor for the whole of production distributed throughout a vast number of buildings. As such it represents the essential character of architecture during a particular historical period. The term 'essential' is not used in any metaphysical sense. It refers quite specifically to the kind of process through which this emergence takes place. It refers to the short-circuiting of the selective process (in the conducive environment of the integrated State) around the identification of the simple similarities and regularities which are the feature of any group of related phenomena. In this case, stylistic groups are classified by pointing to what is recurrent among them as the invariant aspects of the group.
As different styles were essentialized out of the recurrent aspects of many buildings, so the Classical Style is essentialized out of the recurrent aspects of several different antecedent styles; recurrences of form or organization which lie below their apparent differences of character.
The global or Classical style is, in a sense a representation of parts of parts of buildings. Architecture now operates at a tertiary level of problem solving. The first being the trial-and-error methods of the individual buildings; the second level is that of a group of styles which limit trial-and-error methods by providing routines which can solve classes of problems. At the top of this hierarchy of learned routines there is the Global style - the tertiary level - which theoretically provides one architectural routine which can be applied to all classes of problems. More than at any other historical time , the existence of the style reduces trial-and-error methods of production. In using the forms and combinations of this Style, the architects of such an historical period will inevitably produce very predictable future projects. Clearly this has important effects on the question of 'meaning' in architecture which relies, above all, on the degree of probability of any particular building.
8. The Emergence of the Classic Architecture
The result of the gradual formation of this hierarchy of styles and of the eventual emergence of a 'most comprehensive level' is the convergence of architecture around certain preferred methods of composition - it is the formation of a classic architecture.
Such an architecture takes a long time to come about and, equally its influence takes a long time to pass away. Such architectures are the product of many cycles of learning and assimilation and more crucially, their existence is determined not by the continuous endeavours of many architects striving to achieve the qualities of a classic architecture - (harmony, well proportioned, refined, authoritative, etc.), but by the organizational state of the prevailing society. It is the socio-economic integration of society and the kind of continuity which this brings which allows such a classic architecture to come into existence. All the conscious intentions of architects and their skills will not of themselves produce this degree of co-ordination in architecture. Without the continuity offered by the integrated state all attempts to produce the 'Ideal style' will be swept away by the production of equally valid alternatives.
With the concentration of power in a society into a few large institutional blocs, for instance, government, corporations, church, monarchy etc. there is an inevitable result which flows from the concentration of commissioning sources: the reduction of architectural alternatives. This is not simply because such blocs have the power to dictate the stylistic character of an architecture. They do not. The architects who operate in these circumstances must content themselves with what is currently available in the architectural repertoire. If there are still possible alternative forms available then the importance of commissioning power lies in the inevitable tendency, for semantic and technical reasons to continue to choose the same alternative. By this continuity of choice they continue to define for themselves -outside the qualities of the stylistic content - a coherent routine and a habit. This continuity of choice applied by a few relatively large organizations within the field of production will bring about some degree of unity of form. But it is not only the numerical power of the many buildings which large organizations can inject into production which brings about increasing degrees of uniformity. It is the fact that these buildings in some cases will be politically, culturally or socially significant. They are the prestige symbols of the society and this gives them significance as imitative nodes within production as a whole. But even these key buildings can only be created using currently available vocabulary of architectural forms. There is no such thing as spontaneous creation in architecture or anywhere else.
Having said this, it is important to emphasise that these social and economic institutions and the projects which they commission do not by themselves produce the uniformity which is the material base of a classic architecture. What they do is to reinforce an existing tendency towards uniformity already built into architectural activity in the communication and exchange of experience between architects. They provide an environment within which that tendency to uniformity can fully express itself. At the same time there are also many, many other smaller-sized projects being built which still make up a large amount of architectural production. These may be typologically unclassifiable buildings or residual aspects of previous styles. While there may be large numbers of them, the diversity of their characteristics ensures that their influence as imitative sources will be limited.
The integrative influence of works commissioned by major institutions in an integrated state is important at two levels: the number and imitative significance of the works, but more fundamentally, that this influence is continuous over a long period of time. Over time this continual input of large numbers of similarities into the dynamics of exchange will lessen the number of differences in the field by attracting to itself an increasing number of imitative works. Similarity begets similarity for the pragmatics of communication requires a common language and this inevitably occurs with the exchanges that take place within the confines of any defined environment. This institutionally-derived numerical preponderance becomes the source of selection and combination by other architects by default. It becomes the common currency of exchange between the agents of the system.
The classic architecture of an era should not be seen as the architecture of the institutions, but something else. It a product of the whole field of exchanges of formal characteristics. The institutional commissions provide a node or framework within which similarities can accrue. In mathematical terms the increasing hegemony of production by institutions reduces the number of variables in the field of exchange which is architecture. It reduces the diversity of forms within the repertoire as a whole. The fewer the number of variables the more possible it is for the whole field to synchronize its characteristics. The presence and commissioning power of the institutions in a centralized socio-economic state provides the opportunity for a uniform classic architecture to emerge. There are numerically less possibilities to choose from (and recombine) and this will concentrate architecture around a fewer number of forms -which is the basis of the classic architecture - a limited number of forms and combinations.
Thus, the works of the institution, of the avant garde, the remnants of past architectures, the myriad of unclassifiable works, socio-economic continuity and the invariable collective activity of selection and combination will result in the emergence of a single, comprehensive new architecture.
9. The Reflexive Stage of an Architecture.
The classic architecture is a set of instructions which can be used to meet all representational needs. It is a more or less adequate means of dealing with any possible context (representational requirement) which is likely to be met in the society which produces it. Formal elements, geometries of distribution, planning grids, element hierarchies, proportional systems, building styles, surface articulation, rhythmic patterns, decorative schemes and so on can now all be standardized. All the elements and relations which will be bound together into a building can now all be specified directly from the style - no matter what the circumstances of the project. Indeed circumstance (local context) itself is no longer the major factor in the design of buildings. The formal language of architecture is finally co-ordinated in the typical set of the classic architecture but, it is the language which is co-ordinated - not the many different experiences which it must represent. They remain as always, as diverse and unique as ever.
At this stage, architecture becomes context-free. The classic architecture reduces the number of possible element combinations to a fraction of all possibilities. No longer does the individual context or circumstance define the whole configuration of the building, but acts rather as a 'flat' plane upon which certain combinations will be assembled. However, in its early stages the classic style still remains a flexible instrument of representing experience in architectural form. Although the character of buildings does not vary as much as the contexts which they represent, it is still possible to indicate their difference from each other by some permitted manipulation of the standard elements of the Style.
Problems of representation will eventually arise if the Integrated nature of the socio-economic system remains the same. That is, if it is continuous. The reason is that even with the unification of architecture into a classic and uniform style, the collective typological process remains just as active as ever it was. Thus, this uniform architecture will be subject to further essentialization. As before the result of this is to reduce further the number of permissible formal options available in the set. This will inevitably reduce the style's ability to represent experience. Whereas before, the classic architecture allowed for variations in combination which could represent the differences between different circumstances, further typological activity reduces this possibility. It becomes unable to represent difference by allowing such variations. The style becomes a lens through which one can only see what is similar.
Architecture enters a reflexive stage of activity which confines itself to further co-ordination of itself as a language. It concerns itself with a more intense search for the certainty of the imaginary Ideal Style which demands that it eliminate as far as possible the number of variations which can be generated within the already limited set of the Style. In searching for further similarities and recurrences between its elements, it increasingly ignores the whole dimension of differences which reside in the real world outside architecture. It resorts to a stage of description and classification of its own internal mechanisms and structures and at this stage its operations can be seen as the final assimilation of all the experiments and innovations of the previous era of Plurality. It concentrates these into a single pure routine. It is this stage of classification of the language itself which, in its uniformity makes architecture recognizable as a unique, self-consistent form of discourse.
But this separation of architectural form from experience and context which occurs at this time leaves a representational gap between architecture and society in all its actual diversity. The style may pose as a consensus - the assimilation of all previous positions - but it is actually one which ignores rather than absorbs difference.
10. Fixed Rules, Changing Constraints
From building to style to Classic style, the architectural code transforms experience gained at one level into exchangeable information at another. It learns from experience but only if that experience is continuous. It is clear that the Classic Style will not emerge in the conditions of the Plural State for there are too many variables to allow the synchronization of different experiences. Even if there was, by chance, a sudden and temporary unity amongst all of these, the potential style which would emerge would be quickly swamped by new waves of different and equally valid forms. The most comprehensive level of representation which can be achieved in the flux of the Plural State is that of several different styles or signs. No classic style - the symbol of architectural production as a whole will arise within such a socio-economic multiplicity. In times like this there will always be several equally good answers to the one question.
It is useful at this point to review the rules outlined previously for the production of certain kinds of architecture. They will only refer to the degree of uniformity present in the architecture of a given society, though this in itself will have a considerable impact on the character of the forms used.
Rule One: The Typological process acting in the conditions of a PLURAL socio-economic system will produce several different architectural styles.
Rule two: The Typological process acting in the conditions of an INTEGRATED socio-economic system will one architectural style for the whole of production.
Rule three: For any recognizable styles to emerge requires the CONTINUITY of environmental constraints.
Rule four: The typological process is the invariant and collective mechanism by which architectures are generated out of an aggregate of buildings.
Rule Five: The typological process acts on existing architectural material to produce new architectures by recombination.
Rule six: Simple sets of instructions (algorithms) continually applied to an aggregate of different characteristics will produce increasing degrees of order and complexity.
Although one could derive more such rules from the arguments put forward so far, these exemplify a more central hypothesis that the evolution of architectures is a product of the interaction of different cultural systems (architecture and the collection of other systems which make up its socio-economic environment) meeting at random points in time. The only aspect of this interaction which cannot be predicted are the times at which certain coincidences occur. When time is taken into account, the emergence of one kind of architecture or another is quite random. What is not random is the kind of architecture which will occur when certain environmental conditions meet the invariable activities of the typological process. Whether such conditions will be Integrated or Plural or somewhere in between, cannot be known, but the result of their intersection with the architectural code can be.
To classify the forces which produce particular kinds of architecture and to formulate a model based on these simple regularities does not reduce the complexity of architecture. It remains what it is - a vast number of individual endeavours and shifting stylistic movements. What is being put forward here is that the evolution of such complexity can be understood as a function of relatively simple recurrences (in environment and code) interacting with each other over a long period of time.
It is the cumulative effect of the continuity of such interactions which leads to complex architectures.
11. Recursion and Complexity
There are many examples of the cumulative effect of simple programs generating enormous complexity over time and with unforeseen results. Some of these computer program experiments show that simple algorithms (procedures) continuously applied will produce almost biological degrees of complexity.
Another example of the same hypothesis can be appreciated in the simple musical fugue or canon structure. The following passage from Douglas R. Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher and Bach, provides an excellent description of the permutation of a simple theme into complexity:
"There are more complicated sorts of canons, of course. The first escalation in complexity comes when the 'copies' of the theme are staggered not only in TIME but in PITCH; thus the first voice might sing the theme in C, and the second voice overlapping with the first voice, might sing the identical theme starting five notes higher, on G. A third voice, starting on D, yet five notes higher, might overlap with the first two and so on. The next escalation in complexity comes when the SPEEDS of the different voices are not equal; thus the second voice might sing twice as quickly or twice as slowly as the first voice. The former is called DIMUNITION, the latter, AUGMENTATION, (since the theme seems to shrink or expand)."
Clearly the cumulative result of these permutations and others of a relatively simple theme will generate great musical complexity. As Hofstadter points out with reference to formal systems in mathematical logic, to achieve this degree of cumulative complexity requires that the program (set of instructions or algorithm) operate recursively. The 'final form' of the material subject to this kind of sequence of permutations - its complexity - is a direct result of it being built up from simpler versions of itself. This is of course an essentially hierarchic organization and as Hofstadter again points out,
" Recursive enumeration is a process in which new things emerge from old things by FIXED RULES. There seem to be many surprises in such processes - for example the unpredictability of the Q-sequence. It might seem that recursively defined sequences of that style possess inherently increasing complexity of behaviour, so that the further out you go, the less predictable they get. This kind of thought carried a little further suggests that suitably complicated recursive systems might be strong enough to break out of any predetermined patterns. And isn’t this one of the defining properties of intelligence"
Any model which attempts to be a true analogue of architecture must treat history, not as a series of discrete architectures strung out in time but also as one architecture as yet incomplete. It must also base its description of the evolution of architecture on this cumulative and recursive process; this build-up of density through the collective exchange of architectural forms. In this sense it becomes necessary to describe architectural history as a process of endless combining and recombining of elements into a dense and varied pattern - of a few essential elements combined into a great complexity.
Before one can play the game, however, one must discover those few essential rules on which it is based. In order to classify architecture in terms of architecture, one must identify the minimum number or set of instructions which could generate an architecture. These will include both the invariant processes (the melody perhaps?) and variable conditions (variations/permutations). The raw material of the game is architectural form itself. There is an analogy to this analogy in the earlier reference to the invariance of the genetic code. In this there is a continuous permutation of a basic genetic melody called DNA. In human genetics, this permutation has produced so far five billion recognizably different variations on the theme of the human being.
For the purposes of such an investigation, it is important to define what are and what are not invariant aspects of the whole process. For instance the term 'code' is the name of a relationship between two components which together produce architectures. It does not specify what the architectures will be (whether classic/global or separate styles or styles). That is a matter for the environmental constraints which are random occurrences. But, that two component relationship will still produce architectures no matter what the environmental conditions are. These two components: the typological process which in this hypothesis is considered to be invariant, and any existing repertoire of architectural forms. (The latter are the product of previous interactions between the typological process and previous repertoires in an infinite series of recombinations). By definition an architectural repertoire is a variable resource which is in a continuous state of change over time. A change produced by the recursive application of the same set of formative rules. In this way one can say that it is the material of architecture which changes but not the process which changes it.
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