Is architecture still honest to itself?

By Sara Medas

Today more than in the past, it seems that the boundary between art and architecture is much more subtle, sometimes even non existent. As a consequence, far too many times buildings are designed as pieces of art and they seem to have lost that deep and subtle relationship with the surroundings that once characterized them. While a piece of art is a stand alone object which could be placed either in a museum or in an art gallery without changing its artistic meaning, a building is far away from all that. Buildings should always belong to the places in which they are built and dynamically relate to what surrounds them, be it nature or other dwellings. This is the essence of contextualization.

The sense of belonging to a place should always be the result of deep natural, cultural and historical analysis all carried on from the early stage of every design process. For a building to belong to a place, context driven design is the key. Architecture was in the past far more rooted in nature than it seems to be today. This was possible because architecture was almost generated from, and by the place. This does not mean at all that man was not part of the design process, but on the contrary there seemed to be a deeper sensibility to the surrounding environment. This strong relationship with land was also due to the materials used and to the building techniques : for instance, whenever possible and to save costs , stone was extracted from quarries opened ad hoc in situ ( a typical case were the Combe Down quarries , in Bath).

An interesting approach to contextualization can be found in “Architecture Without Architects” , by Bernard Rudofsky. The author tries to step back from the common architectural point of view, narrowly focusing on Western architecture, presenting the beauty of what we call primitive vernacular architecture. His book aims to give a broad panorama of such examples from all places and times. The iconography of the book is accurately chosen to show us that, far before the development of modern technologies, vernacular architecture had achieved a deep sense of belonging to the place as it was harmonically and respectfully inserted into it.

In Rudofsky’s own words:

“The wisdom to be derived goes beyond economic and esthetic considerations, for it touches the far tougher and increasingly troublesome problem of how to live and let live, how to keep peace with one’s neighbors, both in the parochial and universal sense.” 1

The problem arises urgently, also by a social point of view, in anonymous buildings that depersonalize its inhabitants. When observing at vernacular architecture, it is almost impossible to recognize the architect who designed it, if there was even one, as the predominant characteristic is how the building responds to the footprint of the modern architect seems to play by far a dominant site it belongs to, hence producing an architecture that has lost its harmonious relationship to the surrounding context. This is particularly striking in public buildings.

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao , by Frank Gehry. Since its early conception it has been the object of a heated debate, from both a cultural and architectural perspective. While standing in front of it, with the late XIX century buildings in the background, the Museum viewer from the surrounding buildings, preventing him to realize that it is alien to them.

We can accept the extraneousness of the Museum to the environment only looking at it as an evidence of Gehry’s originality, and so decontextualizing its design. The Museum was meant to be a symbol of the identity of the city of Bilbao and of the Basque design which broke radically with the surrounding architecture.

In my opinion, we need today to come back to an architecture more respectful of the local traditions and environment which does not mean at all to break the relationship between art and architecture. Considering the building as a piece of art is one of the many architectural approaches and this should not prevent the architect from contextualizing it. Looking at the past does not necessarily mean to passively copy it, but instead both to look at what has previously been designed in a successful way and dynamically reinterpreting those principles according to our times and contexts.

Every architect should wonder what a building is really meant to be and in my opinion the answer should not just be a piece of art.

Bibliography:

Rudofsky, Bernard, Architecture without Architects (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).

The drawings are a personal interpretation of the pictures found in Rudofsky, Bernard, Architecture without Architect (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,1987).