Introduction
People’s beliefs shape the myriads of ways in which they design structures. Consequently, architects think, act, and write about the discipline by deploying certain beliefs collectively referred to as architectural theories. Ideally, the architectural theory is didactic with its theorists tending to remain close or rather working from specific schools of thought. Since antiquity, the architectural theory had existed though it gained more attention when publishing became common in the history of humankind. In particular, in the 20th century numerous journals, books, and magazines among other sorts of publications have been ideally dedicated to addressing the contribution of architectural theory in fostering the development of cities or urbanism.
In the 21st century, the worldwide embracement of the internet is anticipated to make movements, results, and styles of architecture dissolve more quickly in comparison to earlier architectural history enduring modes. Throughout the history of architecture, the discipline has changed in a myriad of ways from public buildings, public housing, urban planning, public spaces, and even cities design. A more modern focus of architecture is on real estate’s design. Akin to all these developments is the contribution of the architectural history insights to shaping the way modern architects make their designs.
With this in mind, this paper focuses on evaluating the contemporary approaches to urbanism as displayed by both James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” and OMA’s “Grand Axe Le Defense” about the use of history or its rejection, and how this relates to formulating new theories for the city centers. Additionally, the paper analyses and evaluates the development and changes of different methods theories, and approaches to architecture and its pasts coupled with differentiation and comparative analysis of past approaches to the design of buildings and present conditions.
Architectural history background
Most architectural theorists contend that ardent evidence on major theories of architecture in antiquity does not exist. However, this does not infer that antiquity architectural works do not exist. Vitruvius’s works are perhaps one of the pragmatic architectural works that inspire modern architects. Vitruvius, a Roman Empire architectural theorist, and engineer, in 1st century BCE, advanced his architectural classical theory, which indeed forms the fundamental frameworks on which modern architectural designs are based. His work covered virtually all aspects of the architecture of the Roman Empire then right from materials, town planning, water supplies, decorations, and temples among others. In addition, the work defined orders of architecture based on classical approaches.
Moreover, the three principles on which modern architectural designs are based include firmness (adequacy structurally), delight (beauty), and functional adequacy (commodity) (Vidle 2008). They are owed to the works of Vitruvius. The renaissance architects such as Brunelleschi and Niccoli among others incredibly based their works on “De architectura” – Vitruvius works commonly referred to as “ten commands of architecture”. The Renaissance architect’s works, on the other hand, formed the basis of the emergence of the enlightened age architectural theories. This age marked enormous developments in architectural theories especially in the European continent (Bergdoll 2000, p.12). Herculaneum and Pompeii made new architectural discoveries during this age, which resulted in incredible interest in architecture and classical work.
Thus as Bergdoll (2000) reckons“ the term Neoclassicism (exemplified by the writings of Prussian art critic Johann Joachim Winkelmann) arose to designate 18th-century architecture, which looked to these new Classical precedents for inspiration in building design” (p.17). In the 19th century, neoclassicism formed the basis of concepts of “return to nature” (Koselleck 1985, p.56) and primitivism in the architectural works approaches.
It is in the ninetieth century that the first rejection of architectural history in influencing the architectural designs was experienced following the publication of the essay: “The American Architecture”, by an American sculptor by the name of Horatio Greenough in 1843. Horatio Greenough rejected the idea that American buildings copied from historical styles of building and postulated that functional relationship exists between decoration and the rest of the realms of architectural elements. Arguably, these theories heralded the onset of concepts of functionalism of the modern architectures. Before the end of the century, increased architectural activities were recorded in the UK and indeed in the entire European continent.
According to Bergdoll (2000), in the continent, “the theories of Viollet-le-Duc and Gottfried Semper provided the springboard for enormous vitality of thought dedicated to architectural innovation and the renovation of the notion of style” (p.21). In 1889, Camillo Sitte published an aesthetic criticism, as opposed to architectural criticism of 19th century, urbanism titled “Der Städtebau nach seinem künstlerischen Grundsätzen” and translated “City Planning according to Artistic Principles” Koselleck 1985, p.56). This theoretical work made many impacts in architecture discipline to the extent that architecture and planning became intertwined.
The postulations of “City Planning according to Artistic Principles” attracted a lot of interest that the publication acquired high demand; something that saw it being translated in German (1889 and1922) and in French (1902) followed by English translation in 1945. According to the school of architectural thought subscribed to by Sitte, paramount focus on design of cities was not pegged on the form or even the shape of the building but rather on quality of various urban spaces enclosed by city buildings (Vidle 2008). Modern architectural movements were opposed to this school of thought with Le Corbuiser dismissing it altogether.
However, post modernism architectural theorists revisited Sitte’s work as from 1970 particularly following the republication of the book in 1986. Anachronistically, the book is deployed as a criticism of modern architectural theories. Le Corbusier sort to set theoretical basis for an international style; something that he thought would have aided in employment of industrialized architectures in reshaping the society. Another architectural theorist, Frank Lloyd (an American) rejected historic revivalism via his theory of idiosyncratic. In deed Frank, failed to subscribe to tenets of international architectural style postulated by Le Corbuiser.
Rather he anticipated that his theory would have contrasted the European architectural approaches. However, his theory was dominated by personalized perspectives of the roles of nature and people in influencing architectural designs. As noted by Bergdoll (2000), in the near end of the twentieth century, “the end of the century post modernism architecture reacted against the austerity of High Modern (International Style) principles, viewed as narrowly normative and doctrinaire” (p.45).
In the contemporary architectural world, architectural theories often influenced by the historical perspectives have immensely dominated architectural discourse with courses in higher institutions of higher learning dedicating virtually almost equal amounts of time in introspection of cultural studies and building philosophy with building designs.
Evaluation of contemporary architectural approaches to urbanism
The modern world encounters a myriad of challenges including shortage of fresh water for human consumption, food crisis, and fuel depletion amongst other challenges. To address these challenges, it calls for all people to alter their attitudes coupled with their lifestyles. Consequently, architects need to design and plan cities and building much better. More precisely, encroachment of the environment, something that provokes forces that lead to a reduction of food supplies and water can be addressed in one dimension by a reduction in sprawling, fragmented, low density, and mono-functional types of cities.
This, therefore, calls for a reformulation of the architectural theories. Literary studies of post-structuralism hold that all theories are subject to critique. From an architectural perspective and according to Bergdoll (2000) such an argument “pushes architecture towards the notion of avant-gardism for its own sake – in many ways repeating the 19th-century art for art’s sake outlook” (p.87). Apparently, with the advents of globalization and with the rise of urbanism in architecture, the concerns of this argument may be argued as having materialized since 2000.
One of the paramount realizations that is part of the current architectural theories, about the planning and design of cities, is that no city can ideally be in totality homogeneous by itself. This thinking is highly influenced by the perception of architecture as being a transient object and by increasing interest in concepts of cities fragmentation in urbanism.
Evaluation of the contemporary approaches to urbanism as displayed by both James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” and OMA’s “Grand Axe Le Defense” about the use of history or its rejection reveals the necessity of deploying new architectural approaches in resolution of some of the challenges afflicting the construction industry. Around the 1980s new architectural ideas rose in America and Europe promoting the rejection of various principles at the heart of the urban planning approaches and modernism theories attributed to the Athens Charter.
As Giedion (1982) notes, “attempts made at the time to conduct new studies that referred to historicism flourished among architects who searched for new theories that would justify architectural explorations” (p.89). Such attempts were central to the concerns of formulating new theories for the city centers.
As a way of illustration, in Poland, in the 1980s designs, such Frampton developed differing architectural designs all creating an impression of the need to develop cities possessing the appearance of historical difference. Unfortunately, critics expelled such a move with the fundamental term central to James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” and OMA’s “Grand Axe Le Defense” works: postmodernism. However, there were excellent designs of individual projects developed than in Poland including churches, several impressive urban complexes of towns like Zielone Wzgorza, and the reconstructed city located in Elblag among others. They all speak volumes of the relationship between contemporary approaches to urbanism and the use of history and or its rejection about quests for formulating new theories for the city centers.
Consistent with James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” and OMA’s, “Grand Axe Le Defense”, it is arguable that city construction is inseparable from time and value. Throughout the evolution process of humanity, people have constructed buildings based on the state of civilization characterizing that particular generation. Apparently, due to the dynamic nature of architectural innovations and creativity of particular generations, theories of architecture also change with existing theories prompting additions to meet the demands of the particular generation whose cities are designed. In this context, forms of cities end up transforming as time moves on (Stirling 1984, p.27).
Consequently, architectural forms overlap the themes behind their developments as time progresses so that, after several years, and outright difference in the structure becomes conspicuous. Ideally then, developments of modern cities both in structure and planning are largely dependent on the historic inspirations behind the architectural designs of ancient cities in the sense that people work to create a difference from the existing designs. The societies’ state of sophistication technologically, socially and even economically advances with time often indicating that the societies are ever in a continuous state of development.
Such development comes with new demand and thus cities needs being reflective of such changes. The argument here is that the historically present architectural forms are the simplistic forms often serving generations whose needs were less as compared to the present generation. The theories that influenced their design, therefore, also needs to take in some perspectives of new architectural theories in the attempt to lay fundamental theoretical perspectives likely to influence the emergence of new designs meeting the required levels of societies’ sophistications. In this context is perhaps plausible to argue that architectural approaches needs not reject utilization of historical designs in totality but rather improve on them.
Another aspect that is explicitly implied in the James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” is the notion of urban artifacts individualities. From this notion, it is apparent that forms of cities are possible to study through studying engineering works coupled with architectural structural forms that are typical to particular historic age of architectural development (Stirling 1984, p.37). In this context, through the development of new theories of architecture, it would arguably proactively enable the societies of the future to merge the miscorrelation that have existed between the two entities. The wealth of history of any artifact is depicted by the existence of symbols of the characteristics of that particular artifact.
From the perspectives of architectural artifacts, “…it is auspicious character and ominous moments of life that make historic architectural artifacts indispensable part of cities” (Koselleck 1985, p.74). In this context, an urban artifact is a piece of artwork. Its non-inclusion either wholly or some of its perspectives in modern architectural designs implies that richness of the artifact is negated wholly or partially. It is also important to note that a cities’ design is a presentation of particular human achievement aspect over particular length of time in history of a given generation. Indeed, particular urban artifacts act as the major influence when it comes to collective considerations of individuality of a certain city.
Differentiation and comparative analysis of past approaches to the architectural design of buildings and present conditions
The current urban designs incredibly focus more on the twenty-first-century state of cities’ capacity to grow and develop rapidly with the ability to translate into new meanings and forms. Consequently, the question of urban design is approached from the dimensions of re-assessing convectional building designs more critically as compared to interrogatives of building form mass, site, and structure as stipulated in the urban design guidelines established over the last century.
Essentially present architectural design approaches “engages the role of architecture in the formation of a discourse on urbanism at this moment of post-industrial development and indeed, of post-urban sensibility relative to traditional Euro-American settlement norms” (Vidler 2008, p.73). However, it is important to note that architects who fail to embrace the past are normally condemned to repeat past mistakes. In this context, exploration of the past building design approaches is critical in the development of sound modern and even future architectural designs, and hence a plausible understanding of the past deepens the architect’s knowledge of design contexts.
History forms a crucial basis for architects’ capacity to make evaluated decisions, which often result in making culturally and socially ramified designs. In the light of this argument, it becomes apparent that the modern building design approaches are essentially part of the past building designs (Stirling 1984, p.54). The differences in the modern-day building design are thus arguably an indication of the developments in science and art of architecture between the past and present.
Comparatively, moreover, architectural designs whether in the past or present are indicative of the critical inquiry abilities of the architects. The differences that exist are instigated by differing levels of technological sophistication between two generations separated in both space and time. Present design approaches, however, perceives architectural design as a multi-disciplinary task that negotiates between various actors of urban building dynamics.
Numerous differences exist between past and present architectural building design approaches. Indeed, many currents and design methodologies develop simultaneously. Some of these design methodologies serve to either reinforce each other or oppose each other in comparison to the past approaches where homogeneity in design approaches was critical. An example of a modern buildings design trend is the deployment of concepts of Biomimicry. While the past architectural building designs could display certain cultural and even religious forms, the concepts of Biomimicry are pegged on the practice of creating building designs reflective of certain biological structural forms.
More specifically, Biomimicry entails copying biological forms explicitly and deploying them in building designs. Therefore, the present architects design a certain building that looks organic in the belief that he or she is imitating nature. This aspect may indeed be illustrated by various iconic buildings designed in the recent past for instance the palm city buildings. The design of palm city was greatly inspired by the shape and structure of a palm tree.
Another major difference between the past and present architectural approaches in the design of buildings is the trends adopted in the present building design approaches that incorporate deployment of computational techniques often influenced by algorithms in the design. In this endeavor, the present building designs integrate computational creativity with the past architectural approaches to arrive at a superior and speedy generation of architectural building forms.
In this approach, generic algorithms that are developed in the field of computer science helps in evolving building designs on computer special-purpose software platforms. The forms generated this way are then proposed and, in fact, translated from virtual forms: graphics form, into real forms.
Employment of computational techniques aids in development of biomimicry since computers are able to generate complex shapes and forms of aping biological forms more precisely than it could be possible to while using the past architectural design approaches. Nevertheless, even though this appears a major breakthrough in making buildings designs much easier and speedy, there exists an immense controversy on the capacity of the design computing to truly constitute appropriate design forms suitable for building or are just instruments designed for self deception that largely relies on misapplication of various biological metaphors and analogies.
Relevance of architectural history and its relationship to style
As argued before in the paper, architects who fail to embrace the past are normally condemned to repeat past mistakes. Architectural style and improvements of a particular style are communicated down generations. As a repercussion, arguably, without history architectural styles would hardly evolve since each style would mean starting from scratch to build it up. The role of history and its relationship with the architectural style is perhaps significant upon considering for instance the avant-garde architectures and urbanism. Indeed the two have been undergoing various adaptive and innovative cycles embracing retooling the discipline to meet the myriads of demand of the social-economic era of post-Fordism. In terms of the determination of the right innovative paths, architectural history plays a pivotal role.
It helps avoid replication of certain issues in designs that had proved erroneous in the past architectural design attempts. Standards of universal consumption characterized the past ancient society. Society has in the present evolved to become heterogeneous often largely guided by proliferated lifestyles coupled with careers differentiation. What this infers then is that architectural approaches need then being also heterogeneous.
Without the history of homogeneous design approaches, it is unimaginable how heterogeneous design styles would look like both in theory and practice. In this context, urbanism and architecture would face incredible challenges in an endeavor to organize and ensure the complex needs of post-for-list society are well articulated. Only then that upon considering the myriads of past techniques and styles of design, architects in the new generation become fully aware of the extent that such styles can solve emerging
problems within sophisticated new societies. As a way of illustration, historical considerations have proved the inability of the old styles and approaches in design to solve complex problems of modern-day architectural designs often prompting the emergence of design approaches dimensions of parametric techniques. Such techniques embrace deployment of simulation, animations, and even making use of the form-finding tool and parametric scripting and modeling. Ideally then without historic accounts of failures or deficits of the past techniques new design techniques’ viability and applicability would perhaps be impossible to devise. Essentially, therefore, amid the sophistication of the modern-day architectural design techniques, history constitutes their fundamental operating principles.
Conclusion
Architects think, act and write about the discipline by employing certain beliefs collectively referred to as architectural theories. Ideally, the architectural theory is didactic with its theorists tending to remain close or rather working from specific schools of thought. In the constitution of these beliefs, the paper finds history as being central to new architectural developments. The paper indeed argued that without history, a track of where people are coming from cannot be achieved, and hence tracing the likely direction worth taking in the future becomes a nightmare.
Stemming from this assertion, the paper focused on evaluating the contemporary approaches to urbanism as displayed by both James Stirling’s “Roma Interrotta” and OMA’s “Grand Axe Le Defense” about the use of history or its rejection showing how this relates to formulating new theories for the city centers. Additionally, the paper analyzed and evaluated the development and changes of different methods theories, and approaches to architecture and its pasts coupled with differentiation and comparative analysis of past approaches to the design of buildings and present conditions.
Additionally, the paper held that with myriads of developments in architectural design approaches, it is apparent that the present society is encountering rebirth of a completely new architectural theory, which bear a minimal association with past architectural theories that have been predominately rested on platforms of philosophy, cultural theory, linguistic analysis and or post-structuralism. With the realization of the fact that technology is dynamic and that present architectural approaches principally depend on technologies such as computer science for their operation, it is somewhat too early to speculate that present-day exploration would indeed have long-lasting future generational impacts on the discipline of architecture.
References
Bergdoll, B 2000, European Architecture 1750–1890, Oxford, University Press Oxford.
Giedion, S, 1982, History a Part Life, Space, Time and Architecture – The Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard University Press, Harvard.
Koselleck, R 1985, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Stirling, J 1984, Building and Projects, The Architectural Press, London.
Vidler. A, 2008, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, MIT Press, Cambridge.