Architecture’s history is replete with self-glorifying tales of heroic designers questing after truth and justice (and in America, the American way). Architecture is a calling in these tales, noble insofar as its aims are good and rooted, unsurprisingly, in a reality just beyond the conceivability of ordinary people. Architects, by extension, are special. They are seers, quasi-prophets of quasi-religious experiences people need and, if the common people only knew better, would want.
This is hyperbole of course but, when applied to famous modernists of the first half of the twentieth century and egomaniacal white men of the postmodern era, it conveys more than a recognizable kernel of truth. People with at least a passing interest in the discipline, if asked, might nod and say, “well, yeah, they [architects] thought way too much of themselves.” And if pressed to judge whether the annoyance caused by outsized egos were the extent of harm caused, I suspect many would say, “no, they caused real harm.”
Financial harm in terms of cost overruns, or maintenance on buildings with ill-conceived details designed only to accommodate an aesthetic whim. Aesthetic harm in terms of squandering scenic views of nature or urban skylines or creating buildings that garner attention at the expense of the identity of a street or neighborhood. Regardless of how harm caused by architects and architecture is defined, the judgment itself suggests participation in self-glorifying myths of truth and goodness, of truth-telling and Messiah complexes. There are multitudes of examples to clarify this point but the allied field of urban planning provides one of the best known: city planner and modernist bully Robert Moses, backed by the might of the greatest city on earth at the time, resisted by Jane Jacobs, a small-statured journalist armed only with pad, pen, and a sharp eye. The story that has grown up around their battle is an epic, mythological in scope: Moses a Goliath brought low by a David in the form of Jacobs. Even an opera has been staged.[i] As in all epics, the characters have come to epitomize evil and goodness. It is great entertainment, no doubt, but arguably most people assume more is at stake than a good story. People take sides. And most people I’ve encountered judge Robert Moses to have gotten most things wrong, to our detriment, while Jane Jacobs got most things right, to our benefit.
Wrong. Right. Detriments and benefits. Regardless of the side chosen, these are the keywords of truth and justice and, in Jacobs’ world, the (Great) American (Cities’) way. It requires only a slightly wider perspective to see today’s architects – interested in saving humanity through efforts to address social justice or climate change – and the critics and apologists promoting them as so many contemporary Jacobs doing long range temporal battle with their early modernist foes. Doers of good come to repair the bad.
If you choose not to take sides or see these sorts of debates as mere entertainment, you avoid the traps of truth and justice. In that case, it’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek – like stating, “everything that has been said is mistaken.” But when one feels that there is something deeply important in deciding who is right and who is wrong, we find ourselves in a realm very different from subjective opinion or a taste for fantasy. These judgments only make sense in a world with a discoverable ground and in practices firmly rooted in that world – in other words, in a world of believers, a world of people who see themselves as explorers, pioneers, and heroes. And, to be clear, everyone involved sees themselves in the role of championing what is right: Moses and Mies and Corb and Wright as well as Jacobs and Habit for Humanity and the Green Building Council and all the rest.
There are ways around this logic trap. There are ways to be oppositional without granting either the other or yourself too much reality or taking too seriously the idea that one is more right or truer than the other; and there are ways to address meaning without assuming we are engaged in a true/false, right/wrong contest. This is a key assumption of these meditations. Nevertheless, most architects and critics of architecture are locked firmly in this trap. Everyone who casts himself or herself in the role of doing good or improving the world or who judges works of architecture as artifacts obliged to do such things is tacitly accepting a discipline closer to law or medicine than art, even if the truth sought and the enemy fought are never made explicit.
[i] A Marvelous Order, music by Judd Greenstein, libretto by Tracy K. Smith, animation and direction by Joshua Frankel.
Architecture is Fiction 