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Reprinted from:
Architecture & Urbanism magazine, No. 60 - 61
February 2001,
Tehran |
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Research
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Globalization
of Architectural Fundaments
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Architecture
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Times have changed, more
than would have been imaginable ten years ago. Quick
data transmission, access to all benefits of knowledge
and human sciences, and the possibility of becoming
connected to a world wide web, have brought about
major changes in man's interpretation of the world and
existence. Traditional societies are unavoidably faced
with a flood of information, modern phenomena and
social-legal ideas of modernity. Closed, cramped
boundaries of the past have been replaced by an arena,
in which man is in constant contact and dialogue with
daily events, and all well-intentioned men can only
face this avalanche of information and ideals.
If traditional society has given us ethnic values for
living, modern society has brought us established
values of social justice, freedom of speech, hygiene,
human rights within civic societies, enlightenment,
decent life for all, balanced allocation of revenues
and, generally speaking, more equality for
individuals, who also call each other brothers.
Today, the juxtaposition of these two worlds pervades
our everyday lives and the globalization of men and
phenomena not only concerns economic or technological
exchanges, but also involves acquaintance with daily
facts concerning all nations and societies. Today's
plurality of phenomena and interdisciplinary and
intercultural developments have on the one hand
enhanced comprehension capacities, and on the other
cast doubts on past percepts. Today's progressive man
has a more complete right of living and his thirst for
facts is only natural, because the global
informational revolution has entitled everyone to
scientific and legal values in their lives.
In an international society of global phenomena, the
juxtaposition of cultures is still imperatively
necessary, and globalization doesn't mean the
annihilation of environmental originalities, because
the diversity of cultures and the wealth they create
can provide us with loftier frameworks: a new identity
based on neighboring cultures, and superior
utilization and interpretation of each.
Today regenerating the unadulterated cultures of a few
centuries ago is but a more dream, and keeping nations
behind closed informational and physical boundaries is
a philosophical and historical mistake. Along this
path, the people of the world can only face the facts
and rise themselves and their countries to the highest
levels of moral principles, economy and welfare.
Our young people's awareness in every domain is
incomparably higher than in any other period, and
their eagerness to progress in all of them is entirely
justified, because a great country with brilliant
cultural past can only reply on its youth to keep
abreast with the latest developments, and it must
therefore pave their way in this direction.
Today, the relation between countries are not assured
solely through global economy and exchanges of goods.
Spiritual, ethical and moral issues have also reached
higher levels, and anyone living anywhere has to adapt
himself with this reality:
informational-scientific-legal knowledge. And the only
way to keep our indigenous cultural values alive
appears to be to adapt ourselves to this neighborhood
and cultural exchange.
Now, in this arena, what is the fate of present-day
Iranian architecture to be? To be sure, the solution
lies neither in the central courtyard of the past, nor
in the framework of the desconstructivists' solutions,
because both are too radical to bear any relationship
to our times' enlightened attitude.
Can Iranian architecture not be as successful in the
world as Iranian movies, a spectacle of fine social
phenomena and facts contrasting with the complex
Western world of sex and violence? The formula used in
the case of Iranian movies may not prove effective
with regard to architecture and urban planning,
because movies is a different matter with tools of its
own. But if a step is to be taken, it has to be
towards finding how, in our present day architecture.
We can both be ourselves and rank among the children
of this brilliant global era.
The international architecture community does not
expect present-day Iranian architecture to imitate or
adopt the methods of Western architecture, because, as
mentioned above, today global identity consists of a
correct understanding of original cultures.
We need to bring about a fusion in our architecture
between the essence of our cultural heritage and
modern technological mentality, taking into
consideration some perennial ideals and values of this
land.
Adopting a global outlook does not mean effacing
oneself, just as keeping an eye on international
advances, does not mean imitating their achievements.
It is a matter of personal judgment concerning
elements philosophically and artistically worthy of
being introduced and postponed.
If the empathy are cultures is present within us, it
can also manifest itself in arts and architecture, but
this road seems arduous in the domains of architecture
and urban planning.
Important architectural events have occurred in the
world. The single-minded alienation of the Western
modernism and functionalism of the first half of
the 2oth century, the insuring reaction towards
diversity, and the pluralism resulting from this
reaction that have eventually contributed to the
diversity of today's expression and opened numerous
paths that have considerably broadened the scope of
this field. Paradoxically, at the turn of the century,
Western architecture appears to stand at a point,
where clearly established values no more exist. Mass
communication and social relationships have relocated
some enduring cultural values and the words, in which
the concepts are presented to the public, seem to have
lost their original meanings.
Words such as reason, economy, democracy, progress...
have been so constantly used and abused that many
people have come to seriously question their validity
and deep sense as they are used today.
It is now clear that, when applied to functional
contents and molds, a limpid hierarchy of human,
philosophical and social values can hardly constitute
an adequate ground for the emergence of artistic or
aesthetic manifestation, whose visual analysis can
reveal the sensitive points of a society and the
values prevailing in it.
Architecture and art continue on their productive way,
in a relatively chaotic and unsteady situation itself
based on apparently unstable foundations. Frankly,
what exactly are our antecedents and what are the
principles of the lasting perennial values on the
basis of which a work of art can take shape?
Spiritual and cognitive values speak of a world that
is hardly applicable in today's environment, and the
rational logic of Western positivism based on early
assertions derived from the Industrial Revolution of
the 18th to 20th century has failed to bring its
elevated ideals to an adequate conclusion.
A dialectic discussion on causes and effects running
parallel to religious knowledge and spirituality has
been a junction point that has more often given birth
to antagonism than to peace of mind and communion of
hearts. From the Industrial Revolution to the
philosophical assertions of Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer, what superior meanings have we truly
discovered, upon which works of art and architecture
can be based in an analytic process. Perhaps like
Proust in search of time lost, we should embark on a
travel into memory and history, as can be seen in some
commercial, consumer-oriented post-modern productions.
In the discussion of Western philosophers, from
Heidegger to Derriba, Gadamer and Habermas, and later
Ricoeur, all we see is a effort; an effort to lay the
foundations and build the infrastructure of a
meaningful rational thought capable of carrying of the
burden of man's lofty growth. But, Have we reached an
intersection? Can difference and doubt give birth to
the form of a coherent identity in architecture?
Faced with this problem, the architect creates works
of art within the frame of his solitary mind, and its
justification is also his own. He conceives an
elevated ideal in the flight of his mind and, by
connecting himself to eternal history, he aspires to a
thing the modern movement has long left behind. You
only have to look at the works of Carlo Scarpa, Aldo
Rossi, Mario Botta, Raphael Moneo and many others to
well appreciate the reality of this claim.
Despite its composite architectural forms, the
post-modern era was a warning aimed at returning to
environmental, emotional and historic grounds; a point
with modernism has more or less disregarded in its
absolute view of the matter. Deconstructivistic
methods of analysis may have become established in
determining philosophical views and architectural
spaces, and borne potentially dynamic solutions, but
in our field we have witnessed the creation of
incoherent forms incompatible with a research method,
in which every result obtained is faced with yet
another question. We take our lessons from history and
civilization within our own selves, in creating our
architectural works, we prefer to develop our own
productive talents, and we screen the floating values
of today's world through a hierarchy of values, and
thus architectural forms acquire an identity, in which
the far and near metaphors of history are merged with
the modern world and the latest developments on the
threshold of the 21st century. We also conceive a new
individual mission towards it. The works of Gehry or
Liebeskind say it all. We may interpret their
statue-like plays of forms as a mere new spatial
experiment, but in the end they bear the totality of
the problems of today's world, in which daily
policies, economic production and the consumer society
play very important roles.
Another highly important issue on the international
scene today calls for attention being paid to the
environmental and social ground of architecture. It
rejects single-product architectural works created for
their statue-like beauty without regard for their
context, and its aim is to harmonize architecture with
the city, the human environment and the economic
realities.
The important fact is that many developing countries
are relatively poor. Their urgent need is for a
fundamental social infrastructure, not a monumental
architecture. However, the quality of a country's
architecture and urban planning indicate its degree of
civilization, and all have the incontestable right to
enjoy aesthetically pleasant spaces in a human
environment.
How we can forget that more than three billion human
beings out of the total six earn less than one US
Dollar a day? On their way towards development, more
than half of the 189 nations of the world are
struggling with poverty, financial corruption,
national managerial and financial disorganization,
governmental-political turmoil, lack of effective
social welfare institutions, and daily problems of
earning a livelihood. Many of these countries are
enhancing the living standards and human dignity of
their population despite their economic limitations
(the most conspicuous examples being India, Kashmir
and some African countries). Poorer countries, with
their large needy population, truly live in poverty
and it remains to be seen how globalization will
establish a human-financial relation between these
countries and the economically development world.
Perhaps one of the duties of these countries'
architects is to plan their constructive efforts in
this direction and adopt an architecture defining a
minimal space foe the benefit of these deprived
people.
In today's world, in these times of globalization, we
are treading along a slippery aesthetic and
architectural path between tradition and modernity
that is sometimes tumultuous and sometimes resembles
an unending spatial travel like a roaring sky that
will some day eventually experience azure serenity.
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