zeitgeist: g Zeitgeist, lit ‘time-spirit’, Zeit, time, being akin to e tide and time, and -geist to e ghost 1.
i “It is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that church and state speak to and impose silence upon the crowds.2” All architecture has authoritative power: the construction of a wall is in itself the assertion of authority, manifesting – and signifying – that you cannot pass. However certain building types put forward a different, more semantic kind of authority. it is in this sense, that the cathedral and the palace are the embodiment of power and sovereignty – whether transcendental or worldly. Furthermore this power is never merely a property or a condition, but relates to an idea: that of a type of rulership and thus of the way a society constitutes itself. Hence a palace is not just a typology, but simultaneously the embodiment of an idea, a virtual condition set down in stone. What exactly is it then that the word palace describes, or rather what is a more or less established understanding of a palace? The term itself derives from the Palatine Hill in Rome, the locale of the imperial -4-
palace, from where it spread throughout europe with the expansion of the empire, taking different shapes and disguises: the italian palazzo, the French palais, the german Palast or the english palace all describe slightly distinct types of buildings. it may therefore not be as much the word itself, as the condition it signifies that is essential here: the Oxford Dictionary (another ‘authority’ which, in some way, ‘speak[s] to and impose[s] silence upon the crowds’) defines it as ‘a large, impressive building forming the official residence of a sovereign3’. The dictionary’s more specific architectural offspring goes into a bit more detail and refines it to ‘a building used for the staging of court ceremonial, or for the demonstration of political power, which receives some form of architectural expression.4’ Obviously, such buildings existed long before, and far away from where the word palace was ever heard: power always seeks representation. in this sense, as the analogy of idea and form, they could be considered as the ennoblement of a building – not too different from its apotheosis, the cathedral…
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ii ‘Architecture, before any other qualifications, is identical to the space of representation; it always represents something other than itself from the moment that it becomes distinguished from mere building.5’ As an explicit manifestation of authority, the construction of a palace has always been a distinctly ideological project: the way in which the building is the product of an idea, in which it is the representation of an envisioned or existing system, in which it embodies the power structure of a society, is not matched by any other secular building type. This inherent condition becomes most evident in the age of absolutism – never before or after has the analogy between politics and its physical counterpart been as explicit. el escorial, built in the latter half of the sixteenth century, is the solid expression of Philip ii.’s piety and his crusade against the heretics in the counter-reformation. Within its walls, the idea of a unity of church and monarchy is embodied in the physical fusion -8-
of royal residence and monastery. Almost precisely a century later, this kind of ideologically charged construction reaches its climax in Versailles. The palace – and most explicitly its garden – is an obvious representation of the centralistic, absolute regime of Louis XiV. Additionally, it served a factual, political purpose, as it kept the nobility close to the sun King and away from actual political power. in the next centuries Versailles thus became a model that was replicated by monarchs all over europe – with varying degrees of precision and splendour. This race through history should however suffice to underline the obvious: that a palace is the most distinct form of ideological architecture – in which it is not limited to autocratic regimes: the examples of the Palace of Nations or the Palace of the soviets demonstrate that the terminology palace alone suffices to imply that an idea is manifested by a building.
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iii ‘Let’s not forget this shattering function of the economy of mimesis that defines the ideology function of architecture: it does not produce copies, but models. It produces itself as a model. It does not imitate an order but constitutes it: whether the order of the world or of society.6’ in the nineteenth century this constitution of an order was set up precisely through imitation – or rather it was set up through the pretension of an imitation: by pretending to reconstruct something that had been there before. A fictional history was produced through architecture, in order to construct an order. Thus a decisive change in the construction of ideologies took place: no more was an idea to be given a form, but a form was sampled to extract its connotations and thereby manifest an idea. Reconstruction has always had a very specific place in occidental thinking7, with the most influential case being that of solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, which was eradicated, rebuilt and then destroyed once more. From then on, it - 12 -
was debated whether to reconstruct it or not – but additionally the temple was continuously reinvoked to justify current practices and serve as an ancient prototype8. similarly, in nineteenth century germany, reconstructions were used to consolidate a contemporary condition. inspired by romanticist notions, they served mainly to evoke the idea of a glorious medieval german past: other than France or england, germany did not have an established historical narrative and thus aspired to write, or rather construct one. in a sense the prototype of this approach was the ‘restoration’ of Malbork Castle by schinkel in the early eighteen-hundreds. The castle had been constructed by the teutonic Order around thirteen hundred, and its reconstruction to a more glorious state served as an affirmation of the german claims over these territories. Likewise the Wartburg, refugium of Martin Luther, and proclaimed birthplace of the german nation, was ‘reconstructed’ to what was then conceived an appropriate image of the past. The list could easily be continued: Haut-Kœnigsbourg, Heidelberg , the Rhineland castles, but also the cathedrals of - 13 -
Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle and speyer – nevertheless the summit and simultaneously the edge of nineteenth century reconstructionism was most certainly reached on a mountain top in the Bavarian alps. King Ludwig the ii.’s Neuschwanstein Castle, built from 1869 to 1892 (but never finished), was the apex of these historicist utopias: creating a medieval scenery, through the inspiration of Wagner’s nineteenth century operas, which were themselves inspired by poetic medieval accounts. it was designed from scratch by a theatrical stage painter who created an amalgam of different pseudo-historic imageries and citations. Nonetheless, it keeps making history itself, being the most visited and photographed monument in germany – and has itself become the prototype for a simulacrum, having been the obvious inspiration for the Cinderella castle in Disneyland. Obviously Neuschwanstein, and also the other ‘recreated’ palaces and castles – even though linked closer to their actual predecessors – were neither copies nor reproductions and most certainly not restorations, they were compositions without a direct precedent: partly - 16 -
existing fabric, partly historic folklore and to a great extent mere phantasy. By no means did they attempt to be authentic, and instead of reproducing a predecessor, they produced a form for an aspired narrative of the past. They were thus simultaneously historical – by claim – and overtly contemporary, as historically such structures had never existed. iV ‘The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.9’ After the second World War a major part of german architecture was in ruins and analogically the german identity was shattered: it was not about looking back at history (especially not at the all too recent one…), but - 17 -
about hastening towards the future. Thus was the Wiederaufbau (literally the reconstruction) begun: while rather few areas were actually reconstructed or reinterpreted, most of the time the former constructions were completely disregarded and the city was built anew. From the sixties onwards, the ensuing discontent with these ‘modernized’ cities paved the way for the ironic and citational historicity of postmodern architecture – with history being regarded as a pool, an inspirational source of semiotic signs that could be used to add a more ‘human’ aspect to architecture: it was not about imitation yet, but about a broadening of the architectural spectrum. The heyday of actual reconstruction commenced only after the german reunification: with the country consolidated, and a general trend towards ‘normalisation’, the nation nostalgically looked back at its (now allowed to be considered great again) past – obviously skipping the first half of the twentieth century, going straight back to the aristocratic days. And thus the early nineties meant the slow turn towards a mimetic reconstruction: first solemnly introduced in the - 20 -
debate about the rebuilding of Berlin and the decision for what was termed ‘critical reconstruction’ and then developing into a not so critical, but rather identical reconstruction. Palaces in Potsdam, in Braunschweig and most notably in Berlin were or are being resurrected from the graves – or rather their outer appearance is, with the interior serving entirely different purposes today. The skeleton that carries the historicist facades is usually one of explicit modernity, constructed for a purely contemporary cause: in Braunschweig the historicist facade veils a shopping mall, while the Potsdam palace houses the state parliament – not to say that there is anything wrong about this: the aristocracy that once, long ago, inhabited these places obviously is no more. The problematic aspect is not the alleged disparity between form and function. How could it? What would the historic form be inhabited by today, if not a contemporary function. The core of the question is rather, why the historic substance is mimetically reproduced? Or rather, what this says about our time? especially, as this is neither a purely german phenomenon, nor limited to the - 21 -
resurrection of pre-modern structures: in the eighties Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion was rebuild from photographs, and recently a Chinese developer announced the competition for a reconstruction of the Crystal Palace on its original site10. V ‘… today one has the impression that history has retreated, leaving behind it an indifferent nebula, traversed by currents, but emptied of references. It is into this void that the phantasms of a past history recede, the panoply of events, ideologies, retro fashions – no longer because people believe in them or still place some hope but simply to resurrect the period when at least there was a history …11’ What then does it indicate, when a society – and it seems to be justified to refer to a society here, as there is apparently a great level of support for these revenants amongst the population – appears to feel the urge to reconstruct vanished symbols of authority? What is the zeitgeist that inhibits these - 24 -
monuments? it does not seem too farfetched to assume that there is a connection between the ever-progressing globalisation and the increasing virtualisation of everyday life, along with the resultant feelings of disconnection, uprooting and delocalization on the one hand, and the apparent search for an identity on the other. The motivation would then be not too different from that of the nineteenth century: to construct an identity through the symbols of the past, that carry along with them notions of locality, nationality, historicity and most importantly a certain feeling of specificity, of uniqueness. Obviously this creation does not endow history as a layered, multi-facetted entity, but as a monolithic and homogenous – in its physical incarnation monumental – construct: an ideal, singular, linear and comprehensible truth. Thereby these projects pick one specific point in history, which they refer to and subsequently reincarnate. interestingly enough, the technical modus of this reincarnation is usually of a completely contemporary kind. Thus – while they are intended almost as an antidote to the virtualisation of today – their creation is in- 25 -
herently linked to the processes of precisely this phenomenon. And additionally: what could be a better expression of contemporary practice than a copy/paste building, an architectural [ctrl + z], a historic click on undo. Now, obviously architecture is still of a very physical nature and this undoing is therefore not as easy as its virtual counterpart – which is why it is usually limited to a resurrection of the facade. in this sense what unites all these rebuilding efforts is their focus on the appearance of the building – disclosing that reconstructionisms and contemporary formalisms are actually nothing else than two sides of one and the same coin: a fancy variant of the decorated shed desperately screaming ‘i am a Monument!’ – with nobody really listening…
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Vi ‘When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.12’ All that these edifices express, in a multitude of accents and dialects, is: ‘i am here, i am historic, extravagant, spectacular, look at me, here..!’ That is why commercial strategists, investors and tourist agencies love these buildings: they are the barkers of the funfair cities of the new millennium. in that sense they might even work, but they are mere advertisement, keeping the machine running. Buildings turned into flashy figureheads, glaring signboards selling something to someone – the same goes for the names attached to these ‘boards’: a library is now an idea-store, a university building a learningcentre, and any given townhouse has to be either a palais or a palazzi – not quite a palace yet, but almost. Now, when both linguistics and form go looking for something outside of their actual ‘content’ to find a proper expression, then that implies that something is rotten in the state of architecture. in this - 29 -
sense, a lot of contemporary buildings purport to say something, but the relation between words and message, form and content is obscured – with the extravagant exteriors (be they baroque or parametric) appearing as nothing else than a futile attempt to hide the increasing meaninglessness of the architecture itself. Thus the trend for palace reconstruction is merely the most obvious symptom of a general condition: in complete disregard to their proponents original intentions, these echoes of authoritarian palaces actually seem to mark the demise of architecture’s authoritative being, with the expressive formalism of these constructions sounding like the desperate death cry of a dying species – ideology has left the building. The medium is still the message, but most of the time architecture is merely not the medium anymore. it is physically there, but it is not the place of representation, but rather the object used by other media as a metaphor – it is not about the physical presence, but about the virtual imaginary of architecture. Not that architecture does not assert authority anymore. it does – but there are other, more - 32 -
elusive devices today. Thus architecture does not seem to be bound to manifest an idea, a meaning anymore – but can rather become infused with it, charged with it, providing a stage or an enclosure for it – this is not to say that it carries no meaning, that it does not convey anything about the idea behind it, but only that it is less and less of an authoritative semantic device. in that sense, architecture is probably just transforming its own purpose: the king is dead, long live the king!
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FOOtNOtes 1.
e. Partridge, 1966, Origins: A short etymological Dictionary of Modern english. Fourt edition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p.818.
2.
g. Bataille, 1920, ‘Architecture’, in N. Leach (ed.), 1997, Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. p.21.
3.
C. soanes and A. stevenson (eds.), 2004, Concise Oxford english Dictionary. eleventh edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.1029.
4.
P. goode (ed.), 2009, The Oxford Companion to Architecture 2: Vol 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.689.
5.
D. Hollier, 1992, Against Architecture: The Writings of georges Bataille. Cambridge, Mass: Mit Press. p.31f.
6.
ibid. p.34.
7.
For the purpose of clarity, this essay leaves aside oriental concepts of successive rebuilding – such as the perpetual reconstruction of the temple of ise in Japan.
8.
For instance, the aforementioned escorial Palace (whose ground plan was supposedly based on the description of the temple) was considered a new temple of solomon by its contemporaries.
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9.
W. Benjamin, 1936, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in W. Benjamin & H. Ahrendt (ed), 1969, illuminations: essays and Reflections. New York: Random House. p.218.
10. even the Architectural Association supposedly wants to indulge itself in this business and (re) build the famed Maison Domino by Le Corbusier – which had never been constructed… 11. J. Baudrillard, 1981,‘History: A Retro scenario‘ in J. Baudrillard, 1994, simulacra and simulation. translated from French by s.F. glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. p.43f. 12. J. Baudrillard, 1981,‘The Precession of simulacra‘ in J. Baudrillard, 1994, simulacra and simulation. translated from French by s.F. glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. p.6
The images of the Berlin City Palace’s [re]construction have been excerpted from the webcams of the ‘stiftung Berliner schloss – Humboldtforum’.
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MA History & Critical Thinking Architecture and its Mediations Dr Douglas spencer Winston Hampel April 2014 Architectural Association school of Architecture 36 Bedford square London WC1B 3es
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