Chapter Nine: THE SUPPRESSION OF HISTORICAL TIME
1. The Suppression of Historical Time
For over 400 years from the middle of the 15th century to the later years of the 19th, the architecture of Europe (and North America) was dominated by the Graeco-Roman Type formulated during the Italian Renaissance. Hundreds of architects, produced thousands of different buildings during that period which were combinations of the elements of that Type. Each of these many buildings was a very particular solution to a very particular contextual problem and yet each of them was able to formulate that solution out of the standardized element-combinations of the Type. Reduced to its most basic elements, the typical set of the Renaissance Type would include for instance: the five 'characteristic' orders, the columned portico, pediment, entablature, cylindrical 'temple' form, dome, rustication and other surface treatments, harmonic proportions, podium, standard mouldings, intercolumnation formulae, geometry of square and circle. From these, and a number of explicitly defined rules of combination (composition) which spring directly out of the choice of one of the orders or another, innumerable different buildings were created. During its history it underwent numerous adaptations and generated several different variations including Baroque, Rococo, French Classicism, Neo-Classicism, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Beaux Art, North American Classicism and many colonial variants of the European styles. However, the Type still retained what one might call its 'species characteristics' so that by the middle of the 19th century, it was still recognizably the same Type. It had not yet become simply a memory but had remained a practical instrument of representation, but one which had become blunted by continual use. By the middle of the 19th century there were simply too many different ways of saying the same thing and yet they were all locked within the same typological frame – the Renaissance Type. From a systems point of view we have here a very obvious example of the increasingly entropic condition that occurs in a system closed to information. In other words a system that cannot incorporate new forms or different methods of combination; a system which has fully exploited its reserves of ideas. The result is a kind of internal anarchy; a proliferation of increasingly desperate permutations of the same set as architects strive to respond pragmatically to design problems yet remain within the strict limitations imposed by the prevailing Type.
These are examples of the kind of irreconcilable demands on a system discussed in the previous chapter. Demands which ultimately result in the fragmentation of the Type itself. By the 19th century, in the final stages of Involution, the Renaissance Type as a definite reference point for architecture had been volatized by over-precise analysis, leaving only the variations as its residue. Apart from a radical socioeconomic change, there was no reason why this permutation of variations should not have continued indefinitely.
The architectural debates and controversies which grew in intensity as the 19th century wore on centre exactly on this Involutionary condition and the ambiguities which it produced. One of the products of this crisis and an example of the process of displacement which inevitably occurs during such times was the resort to the Neo-Gothic style as a way of getting out of the straitjacket imposed by the Renaissance Type. In terms of architecture as a whole – the system in other words - here we had displacement on a grand scale. A formerly marginalized style was called up to close the semantic gap which had opened up between the dominant architecture of the period and the multitude of contexts which it could no longer authentically represent. Gothic itself, as a style, had remained in existence as a sub-routine within architectural production since the Renaissance, but marginalized into very specific contexts such as religious buildings, follies and some vernacular building types. Again, to use an ecological analogy, it had not become extinct but rather its territory had contracted in the face of a massive intrusion by ‘another species’ – the Renaissance Type. It has been mentioned before that the dominance of a particular Type does not exclude the co-existence of other styles. Dominance or otherwise is simply a matter of the number of architects who use the typical elements of one style or another. There are always several styles in existence at any one time and their influence may expand or contract depending on historical circumstances. From the point of view of architecture as a single cultural system, these marginalized styles function as potential sub-routines which can be called up for very specific purposes. Apart from its historical association with a thousand years of European culture, Gothic had one considerable advantage as a means of representation and that was its inherent flexibility of plan type. It allowed for a very pragmatic response to context that the Renaissance Type did not have, at least not in its later stages. It is this which brought about its recovery as an option in the 19th century. Quite simply it offered architects the possibility of being spontaneous AND authentic in the modelling of social institutions in built form. That is, it gave them a way of avoiding the ‘double bind’ which beset the Renaissance option and which led to the schizophrenic behaviour typical of Involutionary conditions. Here we have similarity between the function of the Neo-Gothic vis-à-vis the Classicist option and the function of decoration vis-à-vis an inert Type. In both cases the secondary system brought into use is inherently more flexible than the Type. It allows architects to improvise in the creation of buildings which the dominant Type will not allow. Indeed, one could in some cases replace the word ‘decoration’ (with its sometimes contentious or even sentimental associations) with the noun ‘improvisation’ which provides a more operational definition of the processes involved.
Neo-Gothic as it became known had its own problems of course. The very fact that it was so responsive to circumstance meant that it could only become a unified instrument of representation by recourse to decorative fixtures which could give it that necessary uniformity of image; the capacity to represent the similarity between its very different manifestations. It is also worth considering in this respect that the flexibility of Gothic partly stemmed from its decorative character as a ‘world of details’. This fragmentary appearance was quite consistent with its thousand year history as the dominant style of Christian Europe. By the fourteenth century, Gothic as a style had run its course and had dissolved into a mass of decorative details consistent with an Involutionary phase. Over four hundred years later it would be the character of this particular end state which would be recovered and re-cycled to provide contextual markers for 19th century architecture. As usual the marginalized forms of the past would be used to solve current problems.
While the debates between the Classicists and the Gothicists about the relative merits of each style as the appropriate architecture for the time centred around their historical associations – the authority of Classical past or the supposed Christian basis of European civilization – the real issue was ultimately one of finding a single architecture which was both flexible and ordered, both singular and plural. In the midst of these debates one could also hear the Gothicist - Arts and Crafts justification for their style in terms of ‘utility’ and ‘fitness for purpose’. Here we have what appears to be an embryonic functionalism but which can be easily translated from a partisan call into a general demand for an architecture which could respond directly to circumstances while maintaining its identity.
For the Renaissance Type the theme had been lost in the midst of the many variations that had been played on it. Of course one can say that these numerous variations show that the Type was becoming increasingly flexible. While this is true, one must also note that it was being achieved at the cost of its identity as a singular style. It was in effect becoming several different styles with the consequent problems that this brings in terms of representing the similarity between different contexts. There was no way that the architecture of the 19th century could achieve the necessary balance between pragmatism and idealism. This was particularly true since major socioeconomic changes towards Plurality provoked by the Industrial Revolution were dissolving the possibility of having any unified architecture at all.
Changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution are often given as the reason for the devaluation of the Renaissance Type. For instance it is sometimes suggested that it was simply unable to handle the many new building types generated by the Industrial Revolution. This is an over-simplification of the problem, for the whole purpose of a Type is to do exactly that, namely, to represent many different contexts with as few reliable architectural elements as possible. The problem for the later Renaissance Type was that for reasons purely internal to the language there were now too many combinatorial possibilities not too many new building types. This internal crisis could have gone on indefinitely, but a random change in architecture’s environment - the Industrial Revolution and a new plurality of commissioning sources – made the whole debate irrelevant. Quite simply, the dispersal of the system of patronage and the massive influx of new building types required by new economic conditions effectively exploded the remnants of the Type into a loose constellation of styles.
Ringing demands for a new architecture to suit the conditions of the time did not magically produce the new architecture of Modernism. The environment called a halt both to the endless debates of the early 19th century and to the state of the stereo-Type which had provoked those debates. As the century wore on the crisis had dissolved as architecture re-normalized itself into the kind of pragmatism demanded by Evolutionary conditions which produced an endless projection of different characteristic types.
Although the Type in the form of its basic set could no longer be so clearly defined as the frame of reference for this great mass of variations, it still provided its characteristic identity in the decorative repertoire which allowed it to function and which had become its corporeal image. It is here that one can refer to the multiplicity of ‘historical styles’.which existed at the time and which give the Victorian period its characteristic diversity of architectural images.
Its final dissolution would come about as these historical styles – the decorative remains of the past - tried to incorporate the unprecedented spatial and functional demands of the new building types demanded by the Industrial Revolution. In effect their controlling geometries, symmetries and formal rules would be exploded and the residue – the Grid and the Free Plan - integrated into the forms of the Early Modern Movement.
With the collapse of the Renaissance Type as a unified program for architecture, one can refer to the ensuing diversity of architectural possibilities as, effectively, the triumph of the marginal at the end of an architectural cycle. Yet architecture even at this late point still curved around the memory of the typical set in its classic stage during the Developmental period in the 16th century. In this sense, at least, the Type had conquered historical time; not the abstract time of clocks, but real time measured in a sequence of material changes made visible in the environment. It had defined for itself a kind of event horizon beyond which these many variations could still, in some sense be regarded as an unchanging similarity. It had fulfilled the function of all styles which by their stability suppress historical time. It had entered Mythic Time.
2. The Mythic State
The transition from Development to Involution establishes the mythic quality of the architectural Type. ‘Mythic’ in the sense that it no longer refers to time or change but rather to an organizational principle which establishes the formal limits within which particular variations of a style will arise. In a sense it shifts from being the recipe for the production of a particular architectural style to being an increasingly abstract set of instructions for the production of endless variations on a theme. While the numerous buildings and the variety of sub-styles which a Type generates are concrete historical facts, the Type itself in its permanence and immanence can be seen as an ahistorical or synchronic entity. Like information, which is in fact what the Type is, it acts as the rules of the game which are themselves invisible but constrain and characterize every single instantiation of the game. It is in this sense that the parallels between Myth and Type become clear in the permanence of their basic sets of relations, their allegorical method of transformation, their synchronicity, the ‘illusions’ of difference between their various manifestations and ultimately the generation of complexity out of simple programs. Here we have the two dimensions of the typological process, the synchronic and the diachronic or, in communicational terms, the code and the message. In the latter we have the generation of difference: the sequence of buildings that are built over time and each of which try to model some specific set of social relations; and in the former we have the similarity which exists between each of those unique representations. This similarity between unique events is a definition of style, and it is style which is the synchronic dimension of architecture.
Obviously unlike music or the narrative structure of myth, single works of architecture do not have a diachronic dimension. They are immediate and simultaneous like paintings or sculpture. Pure synchrony in other words. However, architectural styles do play themselves out over time in the form of variations on some original theme and it is this historical movement together with the other similarities noted above that allows us to compare them with myth and, indeed to music. This is also the case if we shift the analysis from the formulation of particular architectures to the general concept of architecture as a continuous activity of representation driven by the typological process. What perhaps should be emphasized before the discussion is taken further is that the result of the activity is cumulative. It is not simply that each variation (each building) is a very particular play on the basic set (or theme) and has no effect on any other. While this may theoretically be the case at the beginning of the Involutionary period, it does not long remain so. What happens is that the variations are played out on each other since those that are produced become aspects of the whole repertoire and thus through general communication and exchange, become imitative sources themselves. For instance, paraphrased from Levi Strauss’ analysis of myth, the following example, for the compression of variations within one another gives some idea of what is involved:
1) Typical set (theme).
2) Theme reversed.
3) (Theme reversed) and mirrored.
4) ((Theme reversed) mirrored) and inverted - and so on.
Written out like this, it is the bracketing of previous stages which is the key feature and which indicates the recursive nature of the whole process - the transformation and embedding of pre-processed material within a new stage of the whole sequence of processes. It is in this way that the variations are played against each other and not simply on the original typical set. It is not that the latter was ever an independent entity; it was not. It was always dispersed among buildings, no single one of which ever could use its full range of elements or combinations. With Involution, however, it becomes, from an analytical point of view, increasingly difficult to uncouple the typical elements from their variations. The reason is that each new variation is built upon a previous 'distortion' of the typical set: it is for this reason that the typical elements sink deeper and deeper below the level of legibility. Discovering them in all their purity becomes an archeological problem for they have become parts of self-contained phrases.
The relation between Myth and Type lies in this embedding of an 'original' set within variations of itself, but again, it must be pointed out that neither Myth nor Type nor Theme is one of its own manifestations. (A class cannot be a member of itself). The Myth is not a story; the Type is not a building; the theme is not a variation. Each is a similarity between many manifestations, whether of stories, buildings or musical orchestrations. This brings us to the issue of the origin of Myth and Type for these variations must be variations on SOMETHING (which is not a ‘thing’); on some primordial structure upon which later formative activity plays. What is sought is not some ‘original’ typical set nor its physical equivalent, the primitive shelter or hut. Rather, one must consider that there was no origin in that physical sense, but a series of simulacra – ‘copies’ for which there is no original. What therefore is the nature of the original template upon which history in the form of architecture plays out its many variations? Following Levi-Strauss, one can suggest that this structure is defined by categories generated by the 'purely formal functioning' of the human mind which captures the material of the world and organizes it. When any material is subject to thought and categorization, the result will be the imposition of a basic set of relations between different parts of the material; a direct analogue of the pattern of biologically-derived cognitive processes which are built into the structure of the human brain. This structure and the particular kind of cognitive processes and perception which it imposes provides the materialist basis for human culture. That is, the synchronic or organizational dimension which gives form to the infinite variety of experience. At its simplest it dictates the way human beings perceive the world and the cognitive frames they use to organize those perceptions into coherent groups. Human thought is categorical thought. It involves the classification of analogue experience into distinct categories or types. As suggested in a previous chapter it is the active and intentional production of models of experience written out in behaviour or artefacts. The complexity of culture in its various manifestations lies in the fact that this ‘experience’ which is being classified is a product of previous acts of human classification. Although theoretically the basic categories used may be simple, the recursive nature of their application generates complexity – variations played out on previous variations. From the perspective outlined here these categories revolve around the simple binary of similarity and difference where analogue experience is conceptually split into groups defined by the recurrence or otherwise of its characteristics. It is not only that this kind of perception is applied across the full range of human experience but also that it is applied at all scales. The result is that the essential continuity of experience, its ‘more or less’ and ‘both/and’ qualities – its intrinsic reality - is repressed in favour of an ‘either/or’ digital perception; a cognitive construction which is imposed on reality by human work. The world, in a sense, comes to look like the model generated by human categorical thought. The analogue is reduced to the digital. These processes can also seen as involving the usual cognitive binary of integration and differentiation of phenomena. However, although this typological relationship between mind and matter – the synchronic dimension, may explain the 'why' of Type in the sense that it indicates the cognitive grid upon which matter is shaped, it does not explain the formation of particular architectures. As with the definition of cultural system given previously, one can say that architecture is the application of categorical (typological) thought to built form.
New architectural elements are created by a reductive analysis of existing elements and those elements in turn (recursively) reduced or split into finer and ever more precise distinctions of characteristics. The overall effect of this on architecture can be summed up in the word, ‘articulation’. One can refer to this as the operative aspect of the typological process. It is what actually or physically happens when the typological process acts on architectural material. This involves both differentiation of the parts of a building or a style, and the classification (integration) of those parts into a distinct identity or set. It is this very visible effect of the typological process which produces continuous change in the history of architecture and at all scales of the design process. For instance one can easily see that an Involutionary phase is simply the more articulated version of the Developmental paradigm. One can also note during some historical periods an increasing articulation of the elements of individual buildings; their individuality is emphasized by their being isolated from other elements. One is reminded here of a remark by Louis Kahn, ‘what a great event for architecture when the column first separated itself from the wall’.
To alleviate the 'flatness' of the theory and to allow for the formation of particular and different architectures, it is necessary to introduce constraints on typological activity. It has been shown that these constraints are both historical and ‘environmental’: the particular state of material at the time – the snapshot - and the presence of Integrated or Plural conditions which are themselves constrained by a random time factor. The interrelation between these constraints, in the form of Evolutionary, Developmental and Involutionary phase states will determine the historical RESULT of typological activity and the degree of articulation. The categorical function can only operate on the current state of the material at its disposal and it is this which ultimately defines the limits to the process of articulation. In this way history and human cognitive processes (‘the purely formal functioning of the mind’) interact to produce a particular state of things. It is not a coincidence that Le Corbusier in a remarkably similar sentiment to that stated by Levi Strauss on the production of myths, defined architecture as a ‘pure creation of the mind’. So too, and again not by coincidence, Einstein defined scientific theories as a result of the ‘free play’ of the human mind.
It has already been suggested that history is evolution (a rule-driven process) written out in a particular time and place. The key thing here is the idea that the products of history and, indeed history itself should not be considered to be random events. While it may be enormously complex, history remains amenable to rational analysis as against, for instance a simple cataloguing of events or the production of narrative, biographical or ideological descriptions. Again it has to be said that description, however is not explanation. When viewed as a complex adaptive system bounded by the nature of the material which it manipulates to produce its models, architecture can be understood more thoroughly.
3. Transformational Rules.
What remains constant in the face of different environmental conditions is the typological process which exists as a collective activity within the boundaries of a cultural system such as architecture. It is in this particular arena that we have the meeting of biology and culture; cognitive processes and their application to material circumstances. That is, the categorical rules which govern not the formation of particular architectures, but the developmental logic by which all architectures are transformed over time. We are not referring here to the ‘rules of composition’ which govern the design of individual buildings within a particular style. These are the permissible combinations of the typical elements of a style derived from the history of the style itself and are the products of previous manipulations of the form of buildings. Like the typical elements of a style they are generated out of the most recurrent activities of the agents who operate within the system. Rather, categorical thought provides the meta-rules which stem from human cognitive processes and which provide the logic by which any architectural material is transformed. What is being suggested here is that it is these meta-rules which generate (by integration and differentiation of existing architectural material) the formation of new typical sets and the compositional rules which are then used to coordinate them.
One can also suggest in the Chomskian sense that the they are similar to the meta-rules which allow the formation of particular grammars in different languages. Human experience in this sense is organized and sorted into particular categories which arise out of the neural structure of the human brain. In its most general sense this must be true, since logically, cognitive, typological or linguistic processes do not change according to what is being categorized. It is the material which is being changed, not the cognitive processes which lead to its change. At its simplest one can suggest therefore that the meta-rules derived from biological processes provide an in-built set of instructions for the production of models or representations of experience and that these meta-rules are applied recursively to further transform those models. In this sense these meta-rules can be regarded as the rules of transformation by which architecture changes over time. Without such rules which act as constraints on what can happen, historical change would be random. Indeed there would be no history as such since in the midst of the random there would be no continuities with which to measure it. What decisively suggests the existence and the coherence of such transformational rules and the constraints which they provide is the visible order and continuity which one can see in all aspects of human culture. In architecture, the very existence of the styles which unite the form of many buildings presupposes these constraints. While in earlier chapters the process of self-organization was put forward as the mechanism whereby styles arose in architecture, that in itself is not sufficient to ensure uniformity of behaviour. The communication and exchange of experience between a number of agents in a confined environment also requires that the mutual selection and combination of forms be based on common categories or selection procedures. The stylistic groups which arise out of such environments are based on a recognition of similarities and differences and their classification into sets of possible behaviours. The selection procedures are not random but, rather based on an unconscious or unintentional ‘search for’ groups of similar and different phenomena. This synchronic principle of integration and differentiation, its recursive application within integrated or plural environmental conditions and a clear definition of the system boundaries produces historical change.
Using a historical method based on the interaction of these few concepts, one could theoretically ‘predict’, using a form of ‘reverse engineering’, the end state of say, the Renaissance Type in the 19th century from its original state in the 15th century. This would be done by reversing these notional transformational rules so that each of its previous stages or variations would be revealed. Equally theoretically, one could predict the end state of an existing architecture at some point in the future by applying those same rules. In fact, this latter possibility is out of the question. In order to even consider such an idea one would have to take into account the possibility of randomly-timed environmental changes taking place which would radically alter the state of the Type in question. It would be necessary to 'write out' several POTENTIAL histories for an existing Type. Even then, the possible states and variations which could be achieved by one characteristic architecture would be beyond calculation. The case against the discovery and application of such transformational rules in the study of an historical Type is not quite so open-and-shut. The evidence of continuity of the Type is before our eyes and fills many books on the history of architecture. Similarly, the data is available on the socioeconomic organization of most societies throughout long periods of their history. It is conceivable, therefore, that from this mass of information one might be able to extract certain rules which would explain the development of the Type from one stage of its history to another. However, while we might not be able to predict the future characteristics of a specific architectures, its entirely possible to map out its developmental path through Evolutionary, Developmental and Involutionary phases and the effects of such phases on its formal characteristics. The effects in other words of varying degrees of articulation produced by these phases and the various semiotic devices which architecture must use to deal with these conditions.
Underlying the many organizational devices used by architects throughout history there is this continuing process of articulation which arises out of the application of similarity-difference categories. For instance, symmetry/asymmetry; juxtaposition; super-imposition; concatenation; inflection; interpenetration and gradation are all techniques which attempt to integrate or differentiate some aspect or other of the different parts of one building or one building to another. Seen collectively, these articulations of built form not only allow us to distinguish different periods in architectural history but can be said to produce history. An example of this process of articulation can be found in John Summerson's discussion of Palladio in 'The Classical Language of Architecture', note the following passage:
"When I say 'more articulate', I mean something quite precise. Let me demonstrate. Look back first to the interior of S. Andrea, Mantua, and then turn forward to the interior of Il Redentore, Venice. There is almost exactly a hundred years between the building of these two churches, the first by Alberti, the second by Palladio. You will see that the bay design - that is to say, the repeating unit of piers and arches - is very much the same in both. But Alberti expresses himself only in pilasters, Palladio in half columns. This is what I mean by articulation. In Palladio's church you are much more aware of the order than in Alberti's; and at the east end of the Redentore, Palladio's order becomes perfectly free as it turns round to form an apsidal screen behind the altar. It seems as if Palladio's church really is an affair of lofty columns supporting their heavy entablatures: the walls and arches seem merely to fill in between them." (John Summerson; The Classical Language of Architecture; Thames and Hudson, 1980).
Whereas Summerson describes such a transformation in terms of the work of one architect thereafter imitated by others, the hypothesis put forward here is that the same process is occurring continuously across the work of many architects. It is not only that one architect is imitated by others, but that all architects are imitated by each other and that the form of the ‘imitation’ is essentially the articulation of the characteristics of earlier work. That is, a reductive analysis of works where their elements are abstracted from the whole and (more or less) precisely identified. Later work is never quite fully re-synthesized into a seamless whole. Although the degree of articulation varies according to the particular phase of development of an architecture (Evolution, Developmental, etc), one can suggest that the process of articulation is cumulative over time. While it does not stop during certain periods, one can say that its effects are damped down by environmental constraints. It is ultimately the historical process in architecture and is a product of the general process of exchange only highlighted by the work of the more creative architects. One can, for instance extend Summerson's thesis by comparing one of Palladio's other churches, S. Giorgio Maggiore with its superimposed 'temple' front to that of another church built almost a hundred years later: Martino Longhi's SS. Vincenzo ed Anastasio in Rome (1646). In the latter, the whole concept of superimposing layers of orders on one another is taken much further. The comparison could equally be made between II Redentore or S. Giorgio and Borromini's San Carlo frontage which again has become much more autonomous in its relation to the building as a whole. The same kind of ‘history of articulation’ could be written out for the Modern Movement through the precise identities of the International Style, Functionalist fragmentation of form, the ‘significant’ (and theatrical) displays of Formalism, the ‘baroque’ emphasis on technology in Hi-Tech, etc. all the way to the Postmodern fragmentation of the Modern Type.
4. The Separation of Architecture from Experience
Involution brings to each of the institutions and discourses in a society a new level of organization which entails in each case the splitting of the sign from its referent, the name from the thing named and the classification from what is classified. There is at this stage, a new reflexive orientation in the forms of discourse and one which concentrates typological attention on the internal consistencies and harmonies of the languages of representation. More precisely, one may say that the advent of Involution ESTABLISHES the form of discourse by detaching it from experience, upon which it had been dependent for its elements and formative rules. The Developmental phase of a discourse remains an essentially pragmatic assimilation of the results of experience from many different sources. Its goal of acquiring a most comprehensive behavioural routine still concerns itself with matching its forms to 'real-world' situations to which the routine may be successfully applied. Although it progressively frees its practices from particular contexts by inter-changing similarities drawn from many contexts; the legitimacy of its practices is still bound and dependent on their correspondence with experience. Form, in the Developmental phase is still defined by its USE VALUE.
With Involution, the practices accumulated by the Developmental phase are formalized and classified against each other, not against the possible contexts in which they are likely to be used. It is only at this stage in history that one can accurately refer to the existence of discourse, in this case architecture, as a body of practices which are internally consistent and which may be defined and discussed separately from the world to which they refer. In a sense one can say at this stage that architecture comes into existence as a self-sustaining and, indeed self-referential language. For this reason, the dynamic of the discourse, its changes and adjustments over time are not concerned with corresponding movements or shifts in society - it does not attempt to mirror these by shifting its own elements and relations because it is no longer tied to society in a part-to-part way. It has, at this stage of formalization, defined itself as a self-sustaining WHOLE which is within, yet distinct from that other whole – society itself. It has become an autonomous cultural system. The difference, for instance between Palladio's church of S. Giorgio Maggiore and Martino Longhi's church of almost a century later cannot be accounted for by an effect of social change. The difference between the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe and Johnson of 1958 and Michael Graves Portland and Public Services Building of 1980 is not the result of some fundamental change in American social and economic structure; it is a result of an internal analysis of architecture by architecture. In both these cases, the available repertoire is increasingly articulated and varied in order to reveal precise identities and characters out of an originally homogeneous (and relatively anonymous) Type. Even the attempt by late 20th century architects to reinstate 'ambiguity' as an aspect of architectural form (Venturi) is just as analytical and precise in its intention as the technological analysis of form which it seeks to displace. It is an attempt to INSTRUMENTALIZE ambiguity and change it from being a coincidental effect of the resolution of formal complexities to being an instrument of design. Only in this way can its uncertainty and tensions be precisely calculated.
And yet, all the encrustations of decoration and reversals and inversions in the organization of buildings cannot disguise the petrification of the underlying typical set. The routines and habits deeply embedded in the discourse of architecture during a long period of learning cannot be shaken off; for in order to identify itself architecture can only do so by referring to these few highly charged symbols which lie at its core, and which in the period of Involution it subjects to analysis. At the level of the Type Architecture now exists in mythic time - a time of illusions which arise when, for one greatly extended moment, nothing substantially changes. Suspended above the diversity and complexity of contexts, the architecture of Involution is noticable for its spurious monumentality and lack of plasticity. At the later stages of this period its buildings appear to be assemblages of parts. It is in this sense that one can say that these processes do not simply work themselves out at some abstract and invisible level of architecture for they condition the way buildings are actually organized and physically put together. Technique becomes all-important during this time of so-called 'rationalization' of architectural form and what had, in the past been merely 'pragmatics' is classified into method. There are formal and constructional models produced for every imaginable circumstance. Every detail can be specified before the project is fully designed; for after all, it is now merely a question of assembling parts of a building in order to produce the whole. One can sense what this might mean if one looks at the attempt to rationalize architectural form carried out by the Beaux Arts in France.
“……..Julien Gaudet who sought in his lecture course Elements et Theorie de l’architecture (1902), to establish a normative approach to the composition of structures from technically up-todate elements, arranged as far as possible according to the tradition of axial composition. It was through Gaudet’s teaching at the Beaux Arts, and his influence on his pupils August Perret and Tony Garnier, that the principles of ‘Elementarist’ composition were handed down to the pioneer architects of the 20th century.”
(Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, A Critical History)
A sure knowledge is sought that there will be no need to adjust or inflect the form of any part in order to make it work with others.
What has been gained with this loss of authenticity to experience? One can, perhaps, sense the value that such an architecture brings with its emergence by looking at what its admitted rigidity has made possible at the level of production. Each element of this architecture is now so precisely engineered for a purpose that theoretically it becomes possible to predict from this one sign or clue the organization of the whole building. (redundancy). This, at least is the advantage of the earlier stage of Involution. Each building can be completely determined on the basis of the initial selection from the Type. It is the nature of a sign to suggest, simply by its presence, what is absent from perception and this is more than ever true. Each sign is so uniquely engineered that in the process of design one is led quite naturally from one piece of the jigsaw to another. The buildings so produced will, however, be deeply imbued with a publically-accessible meaning for they will confirm all expectations required of them. The relations between the different parts of the same building and between different buildings will be entirely predictable. 'What is said' by these buildings will be sharp and clear but, separated from experience and thus emptied of connotative meaning, that utterance will be perceived only as a long articulated EXCLAMATION.
5 The Function of Ambiguity
In order to render experience comprehensible, the typological process must eliminate its transience. It does not do so by selecting one arbitrarily-defined state of a context and holding that up as representative. It compresses all observed states together into an ideal configuration (a most representative image) of the particular experience. The process rolls back the sequence of events which defines the history of a context and overlays them one on another. Imagine, for a moment, a series of almost similar drawings carried out over time on transparent paper. If all these drawings are then overlaid on one another the resulting image will be a composite of all the drawings: it will be the 'most representative' image of the whole sequence of work. What will be most noticable about this image is that the similarities between the different drawings will have been reinforced, for their lines will vertically coincide. At the same time, lines which do not occur on every drawing will appear faded and relatively inconsequential. The most recurrent shapes will have imposed themselves on this composite image even if each drawing, in itself is different from any other. The end result of this 'stacking' of drawings will be a FREQUENCY ANALYSIS of the whole sequence of work.
While experience, of course, does not have discrete states which can be coordinated in this manner but is continuous, the typological process applied to it does produce a somewhat similar result. It reinforces the most frequent relations and states of a context and synthesizes them into an ideal character. It names the experience by re-presenting it in the form of this condensed image - this character or sign.
There is this fundamental contradiction at the centre of the act of representation, that, no matter what the intention, it cannot represent everything. Some aspect of the referent system is lost in the attempt to symbolize or model it. By identifying only what is most essential about it, the typological process necessarily oversimplifies it. It makes one supremely comprehensible image out of the multiplicity of states which define its actual behaviour. While it remains recognizably the same system, it must shift and adjust its characteristics to meet the exigencies of its environment. At the level of experience, no one of these states is the ‘ideal’ or most perfect for they are all simply necessary adaptations to different circumstances. Equally, there is no point in the history of a system where one can say that a particular configuration is the 'real' or 'most fundamental' state and that all other are only variations on it. The truth about experience lies in its fluidity within limits. However, the representation of that ‘truth’ requires the elimination of that fluidity by extracting from it a single, unique character. This can only be achieved by selecting (or in fact creating) what is, or what is not, characteristic of a particular context. In condensing experience to the dimensions of a model, some of its relations are emphasized at the expense of others. Those which are irreducable to recurrent groups are dismissed as chance occurences which flash through the context at unpredictable intervals. They are deliberately faded or omitted from the final representation for their inclusion would blur the final clarity of the image, and for the digital nature of communication between the agents of the system, clarity is the key issue.
The hierarchy of relations so constructed by the typological process certainly say something about the context which they represent, but they do not say all that possibly could be said. In the end there is this delicate balance between clarity (defining an explicit and identifiable character) and authenticity (expressing the actual complexity of things). As opposite poles of the same representational process they can be regarded as being in inverse relation to one another. The more the work strives for clarity of identification, the less authentic it will be. The more authentic it tries to be, the less able it will be to identify the unique character of its context, to pull it out of the great mass of other contexts and events - to turn it from being the 'background' to being the 'figure'. In practice, a work can be both complex AND simple; but this can only be done when these two categories operate at two different organizational levels of representation. For instance, when the relations between the primary forms of a building are easily identifiable (apparently simple), their deliberate articulation (or inflection) must suggest or imply the real complexity upon which these few clear relations are founded. In resolving the junctions between different parts of the building, articulation in this secondary role as determinative sign reminds the observer of the reductive EFFORT that has been required to produce these few simple masses out of the vast complexity of relations which exist in the referent system. In other words, at the intersection of all this simplicity there is an unyielding complexity; a sign which points to that other dimension of the work, not simply its presence as a whole 'thing', but also its function as a representation or a metaphor of the collision and overlapping of functions within the referent institution.. One can find examples of this kind of architectural sophistication in the work of Michelangelo and Mies van der Rohe among many others. For instance in the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome, the colossal pilasters which govern the order of the external wall resolve themselves into a rippling mass of vertical accents at the junction of the main masses of the building. (There is, of course, a physiognomic analogy here with the 'muscular effort' required at points of stress in the organism). One can sense the same intention behind Mies van der Rohe's articulation of the corners of his buildings (the Seagram building, for instance), where technically superfluous steel 'I' beams provide a strictly representational clue to the complexity which underlies the intersection of smooth wall planes. In both cases, a simple distribution of primary forms is inflected at the level of the details in order to indicate the wholeness of the work - the dynamics of many parts INTERSECTING at one point in space.
In this play of intentions between clarity and authenticity and their convergence in the material form of the work one finds the zone of AMBIGUITY where one intention overlaps another. With ambiguity, the simple and the complex coincide. It denotes, not a confusion of purposes within the work, but a kind of truth about it. It is an implied statement about the relation between the representation and what it represents. Ambiguity offers an ironic clue within the work to the inherent limitations which exist in the very act of MAKING a representation. It suggests that the final image which the work presents can only be one version of experience; there could be others. No matter how inevitable or essential the forms of a building might appear in themselves, when they meet or collide they produce a MARK which points to the reality of the building as a construction. In the turning and twisting and the sliding and adjusting of the forms of the building in their attempt to find an effortless correspondence with each other, there is always an irresolvable complexity - a sign of the making of the building. It necessarily refutes any pretence the building might have to be a truely organic form - a product of nature. Ambiguity is the systemic noise of the act of representation.
In the great work of architecture, the skillful manipulation of this unavoidable ambiguity can allow it to attain the level of the TRAGIC by suggesting the ultimate futility of the act of representation: the attempt to grasp and to control the transience of experience. Even in its greatness, such a work deliberately reveals that architecture cannot say everything there is to be said, nor express the full complexity of the context which it represents. Futile perhaps, but still, the need to construct a more certain order of things than that provided by the random possibilities of experience remains an unavoidable determinant of human activity. The act of representation is, in the end, a simulation of that more calculable order; experience is, for once, brought within the confines of human control. But it is, after all, only a simulation (even in its permanence). It may portrays a high degree of complexity in order to match the reality of events but in striving to make experience comprehensible it must simultaneously make that complexity finite and predictable. Any representation must, of necessity, be less complex than that which it represents. It must ignore the reality of a world which has an infinite number of interconnections which change from time to time and place to place. The ambiguity which arises during the process of representation springs from this insuperable barrier between the 'thought' and the 'act', between what is desirable and what is, in fact, achievable.
6 The Conscious Use of Ambiguity
Ambiguity is a reflexive condition of the work of art for it refers not to some aspect of what the work represents, but to the organization and production of the work itself. While the work presents itself as an accurate 'description' of its context and states that 'this is reality', the slight distortion of its organization - the aura of ambiguity - simultaneously suggests that 'this is not reality, but a representation of it'. By in some way or other revealing the mechanics of the making of the work, through some distortion of conventional form, ambiguity implies an acceptance of the impossibility of the work being an exact copy of its context. It is, rather, to be perceived as a contemplation of it and, finally, its idealization. The work itself poses questions about its own validity as an accurate portrayal of experience; indeed, it refutes such a role and demands to be understood as a parallel reality. Consequently, when the work says 'this is reality', it is referring to ITSELF and not to the content (which it uses as a starting point for the evolution of its own form). One is reminded here of Magritte’s painting ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. Its meaning is therefore doubled into irony for it speaks of two things at the same time - itself and its content. Ambiguity defines the boundary between the work perceived as a literal description, and the work perceived as an autonomous object of contemplation. This is just as convincing a label or clue to the limitations of representation as the frame around a painting. (A literal interpretation of art views the picture frame as a window frame! A more ironic interpretation views the frame as the boundaries of another reality).
Inevitably, in the Involutionary phase of an artistic cycle there is a demand for greater precision (clarity) of meaning in the work of art. In painting up till the 19th century this demand expressed itself as 'Realism' when art loses its autonomy and becomes a visual catalogue of objects. By the middle of the 20th century, after the Developmental phase of Modern painting in the early 1900s, this same process produced Abstract Expressionism and the complete rejection of ‘reality’ as such. The only difference between these two apparently opposite modes of expression is their respective start points (initial conditions). In the former, figurative painting based on Renaissance principles remained the only available vocabulary. In the latter, work carried out by Cubist and Expressionist (Fauvist) painters had already (more or less) dissolved the figurative tradition. In the post-classical and Involutionary phase, further activity could only involve the move towards complete abstraction, clarity of image and the final detachment of painting from any ‘external’ experience. Where else could it go? The developmental logic of this historical movement is quite clear. As with architecture in a post-classical world, art becomes ritualistic, detached from experience and establishes itself as pure discourse. By rejecting figurative subject-matter it speaks only of itself. It eliminates the confusion and ambiguity which exists between the painting AS painting and the painting as a representation of lived experience.
In architecture there is this attempt to eliminate ambiguity from every part of the work; that is, to isolate each form and make it readily identifiable as a pure, self-contained image. This would mean precisely engineering each form around an arbitrarily isolated function, but the ‘function’ here is not that of the institution which the building is supposed to represent, but rather the purely linguistic function fulfilled by the element in the overall order of the building. That means, of course taking it OUT OF CONTEXT. The context in this case being the many other elements which together make up the physical reality of the building. There would be no distortion, inflection or adjustment of the parts of the work in order to make them fit together as a whole. In painting, this rejection of ambiguity leads to the use of stereotyped images of the subject-matter and the use of conventional formulae for the organization of the picture plane or to pure abstarction. In clearing the spaces between different forms of unclassifiable, distorted, modulated and unconventional variations, the typological process (massively reinforced during an Involutionary period), represses the expression of ambiguity. However, the necessity to resolve the meeting of many different forms within the same work remains paramount. If it cannot be handled by adapting the forms themselves at the point of their intersection with one another, then it can only be achieved by ADDING a decorative layer.
One would, at first, be inclined to think that this reduction of ambiguity would be a perfectly natural tendency in the creative process; after all, the primary motivation of all artistic activity is the production of a completely calculable order - unattainable in ordinary experiences. One might imagine, therefore, that the manipulation of the INTRINSIC ambiguity of the work of art - a result of the combination of different forms - would be a somewhat counter-productive activity. In the hands of the skilled artist what instrumental value is there in the conscious articulation of ambiguity, indeed its actual emphasis? In fact even this activity is based on the same attempt to bring order and a predictable meaning to every aspect of experience through the medium of representation. The intention still remains that of producing a potential map of experience; to make it subject to predictive laws. When the intrinsic ambiguity of a potential work of architecture is consciously articulated in order to integrate different forms within a single whole, it ceases to be discord and becomes instead part of a harmony. By deforming those typical elements which are used in the formation of a building (and thus rendering them ambiguous to a literal interpretation of the work), the architect absorbs intrinsic ambiguity into the organization of the whole work. It is no longer simply the visual debris of juxtaposition or the incompetent collision of elements but has become HARNESSED as a subsidiary sign of the whole work. The search for clarity and authenticity is, therefore, achieved at a higher logical level of the creative process - 'higher' because it includes and absorbs the residual effects of its own activity. Now, the building so created speaks not only of the context from which it arose and the typical set from which it drew its forms, but can now also speak about the process of its making. The articulation of ambiguity announces that which might have remained unsaid about the origins of a work of architecture - the compromises, the failures, the successes, the choices, the decisions and, ultimately, the struggle to bring it into being. All this is incorporated into the work and revealed by the conscious deformation and inflection of its typical elements. In this way ambiguity, as an inevitable product of the act of concentrating many forms together into a single metaphor, no longer contradicts the intention of the work or appears as a sign of the failure to coordinate pure elements together in a pure geometry.
Ambiguity no longer appears to be an accident in the production of ‘perfect’ things but rather becomes an ironic statement about the impossibility of such an ideal coded into the form of the building and thus establishes a new dimension of its meaning. In this way, the great work and the artist who produced it display a modesty of intentions – a statement (which contains a statement) about its own limits.
