Architecture Art and Design after Unity P8 Introduction
After the End of History The third perspective
All of us currently witnessing the Coronavirus outbreak will quite reasonably have our thinking directed to finding solutions to current issues. In contrast, it is the means by which we engage with the past that will liberate thinking and facilitate the longterm progression of our civilisation through the 21st Century. This introduction will explore three possible perspectives to the past that provide different ways of innovating solutions for the future: the ‘End of History’, the Postmodern perspective and the third perspective, Continuity. The term “The End of History” was first coined in 1861 by Antoine Cournot to denote the point at which civil society reaches a state of perfection. This was later advanced by Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 article ‘The End of History’ (1) which argued that, following the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the introduction of reforms in China, there were few challengers remaining to the evolution of liberal order. Free markets, he argued, would become universal. This ‘End of History’ perspective thus conceptualises the past as a pyramid founded upon primitive ideas and capped by a perfect state of civilisation at its apex. Modernism in the Arts and Architecture was broadly speaking aligned with this perspective in the 20C. Any thinking succeeding this point of perfection would therefore be of a lower order, largely filling in the gaps and carrying though ideas originating in the late 19th Century. However, the first 20 years of this century have been disrupted by three far-reaching crises: the 2008 Financial crisis, the ongoing Climate Emergency, and the current Coronavirus outbreak. These events have seriously undermined public confidence in the ability of free market liberal democracy to deliver solutions to these complex issues. In the need to enhance and protect the main social and economic structures, governments have adapted to state intervention in various forms. Free markets, so confidently espoused in the 1980s, are no longer perceived as the solution to the most pressing crises. The “End of History” itself has perhaps come to an end. It is precisely these circumstances which we must respond to and determine what form academic thought should take
“After the End of History”. How we will develop our thinking over the next twenty-five years is particularly important to both our current students, and those who are departing the school to begin their professional careers. If we can free ourselves from inherited pyramidal perspectives, 21st-century thinking could be liberated to begin in earnest. The second, Post-modern, perspective to the past closely critiqued the Modernist project. Although this at first appeared promising I would suggest that this intellectual framework is far too limited for our century for two reasons. Post modernism too closely saw its agenda and justification as a critique and rejection of the past (Modernism) and thus unconsciously fell into the trap of repeating the failings of Modernism (rejecting the past). More seriously Post Modernism came at the expense of a tangible engagement with contemporary cultural innovation and technology of our own century. Consequently, historical precedent could not be not actively engaged, informed and harnessed to current research and innovation. Post-modernism could never freely engage with the present. In contrast to both these approaches there exists a third perspective, Continuity, which allows for the continuation of history precedent into the future. Perhaps the first well documented account of this approach here in the UK was by the architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837). In his Royal Academy lectures Soane espoused a critical approach to the past that carried forward a curated body of historical principles as his theoretical foundation. It was to this foundation that Soane attached his own experimental and innovative approaches. ‘By referring to first principles and causes, the uncertainties of genius will be fixed, and the artist enabled to feel the beauty and appreciate the value of ancient works, and thereby seize the spirit that directed the minds of those who produced them.’ (2) In basing his design on historical principles, Soane combined precedent with innovation to produce architecture relevant to his own time. More recently, in the late 20th Century, it was Dalibor Vesely who promoted the need for thinking based on Continuity (3).
