Architecture in the Age of
Divided Representation: The
Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production
Dalibor Vesely
MIT, 490pp., June 2004
To
exclude architecture from cultural history would be absurd. But to incorporate
architecture, with its peculiar blend of abstraction, fantasy and pragmatism,
into a history of culture is problematic. When
they are not practical or clear, the intentions of architects are difficult to accurately
comprehend. In Dalibor
Vesely’s opinion the problem is that the architect has become a spectator in
culture. The dominance of science and technology has caused alienation by
denying humans a truthful experience of the world. One example is the authority
of abstract systems – railways, canals, ring roads, etc. - in the cultural
context of a city. Architecture,
in its communicative role, is the most important form of representation. Here
representation is defined as our involvement and understanding of the world. Vesely’s
intention is that architecture can recuperate culture and human existence.
What we
now understand as science originated from the codification of perspectiva
artificialis in the fifteenth century. Medieval optics, perspectiva
naturalis, understood how space was structured by light before it is formed
geometrically. This transition from space shaped by natural phenomena to
abstract, idealized rules changed architecture and the relationship between the
self and the world. The history of perspective as Edwin Panofsky noted is “a
triumph of the distancing and objectifying sense of the real”.
Vesely describes the human
relationship to space through experiments by Paul Schilder where the body is denied the
visual experience of space. These experiments addressed the discontinuity between the
visual and other fields of perception. The situated human body is revealed as
the basis of spatial reference. From this, Vesely considers a staircase. Fundamentally
it is for moving from one level of a building to another. Whilst it serves a
clear purpose, it contains a series of relationships that are not always
visible. Whether the staircase is in an office or a museum it has a certain
character. As participants in culture, we have in mind precise relationships
between the space, the light, the size and the material of the staircase. Its
true nature is only partially revealed by visual appearance as the stair contains
a series of references to social and cultural life. Identity and truth are
rooted in the habits, customs and rituals of culture. At a recent seminar,
Vesely reduced this line of thought to: “You are not creating, instead you are
discovering and articulating the latent world”.
This is
not an easy book to read. The reader's discomfort is mostly to do with the scope
and depth of the author's argument. What he does successfully is explore the
relationship and relevancy of philosophy and design. However, Vesely's writing
does not flow smoothly. He and his intellectual contemporary Joseph Rykwert
share the distinction of being both brilliant and testing writers. Architecture in the Age of
Divided Representation would be easier to follow if it were stripped down to the bare
structure, but it would also lose much of its value. Illustrations and
photographs enliven the text. Some of these images are of his students’ work:
he taught a design studio first at the Architectural Association and then at
the University of Cambridge. Certain reviews of the book neglect the fact that he
also taught an MPhil course at Cambridge for twenty years. This book summarizes
that course. Magnum Opus is a ghastly term. Despite this it seems the
only suitable way to describe the book: it took him thirty years of teaching
and research to write it.
However,
what has been the impact of the book eight years on? The Department of
Architecture at the University of Cambridge lies in ruin without a diploma
course: the heart of any civilized school of architecture. Any similar diploma,
now taught by his ex-students, is relegated successfully to former polytechnic
universities. Arguably, in intellectual terms, there is no equivalent MPhil
course in the UK.
Understandably,
as Robin Middleton points out, this book 'stirs apprehension, a deep unease', and
as a result has not become a contemporary lodestar. Instead current
architecture theory raises the little finger to pseudo-Marxism, localism or a
war between stylistic preferences. Few acknowledge the problem of
representation. Instead the rise of the Townscape Consultant and accurate
computer generated imagery leads many to believe that this is no longer a problem.
We remain in the situation that Vesely described eight years ago:
“The rather narrow contemporary vision of architecture as a
discipline that can be treated as an instrument, or as a commodity, is the
result of a transformation in which the broadly oriented art of building became
a separate profession, judged mostly by the criteria of technical disciplines.”
M. J. Wells
August 2012
791 Words
