Contextual Studies, Case Study Example

In architectural design, symbols and ornamentation are key elements that are used to demonstrate the ideas of wealth or power. For many years, these elements have created a true definition of what a culture sees as important (Crouch & Johnson, 2001). However, in the last century, these two elements have vastly divided architects in ways they design buildings. Some of the architects cited them as obsolete and insignificant elements impeding cultural development. In contrast, other practitioners describe symbol and ornamentation to be necessary for communicating societal ideas. Several studies have been written over the course of the last century regarding the relevance and irrelevance of the two elements in the context of architectural design. For example, in 1977, Charles Jencks wrote a book titled The Language of Post-Modern Architecture during the period in which architectural ideas were being massively challenged (Jencks et al., 1977). In most part of his book, Jencks indicate that postmodernism architecture has alienated the architects their ideas to develop better designs (Jencks, 2002). He argues that using less decorative elements such as symbols as well as architectural aesthetic makes a design lose its meaning and create confusion of what it is communicating (Broadbent, Bunt and Jencks, 1980). He uses Mies Van Der Rohe to support his argument that use of modern elements “fetishized the impoverished use of I-Beams and plate glass’ (pg.15) meaning they are completely overlooked; hence, raising the question of decorum and appropriateness. Although he is not a supporter of postmodernism, Jencks argues that modern architecture needs to be diverse in regards to its use of styles in different locations and situations.

In contrast to Charles Jencks, Adolf Loos seems to support postmodernism in his study Ornament and Crime. Adolf rejects the idea of ornamentation and symbols by suggesting that architectural development has outgrown ornament (Loos, 2015). In this case, he argues that the absence of ornamentation and symbols in architects is a sign of growth, creativity, simplicity as well as superiority and prestige some of the things which in his opinion symbolism and ornamentation could not achieve. He believes that architectural elements such as symbols, ornament, and decorations are a waste of capital by suggesting they have zero potential for growth and should be no longer considered relevant. In this line, he means symbolism and ornamentation are no longer expression or representation of cultural ideas by past and outdated element wasting man’s power, capital, and materials. On the contrary to Loo’s ideas, Jencks thinks that shift to parametricism has changed ways in which people design and has done many architectural works to lose meaning and expressions (Utaberta, Handryant, and Mydin, 2015). Both of these scholars lay different views on postmodernism and where ornament and symbol should remain to be key elements in architectural works.

In his book In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki explores the impacts the western cultures had on architectural development. Tanizaki wrote his book in the early 20^th century when changes on architectural development were occurring in Asia, and particularly Japan. Tanizaki’s text is based on his ideas to build a home. With this home, he was finding the right mechanism to integrate both efficiency and aesthetic to ensure his design was physically appealing. The cost to construct the building was high, but he suggested that even though it was expensive, the outside look of the end product would count on his success. Here, he tried to mean that the economic aspect of the building did not matter as far the design was visually appealing. That mean ornamentation is a vital element of architectural design regardless of the cost related to construct the building. An example to support this argument can be found in The Louvre in Paris, France which is one of the most popular ornamented landmarks in the globe. It is stated that the ruling leader at the time, King Louis XVIII spent over 700,000 francs in a period of eights to expand The Louvre. Most funds were indulged in constructing large ornate buildings to underline the power and wealth of the ruling leader as such ornamentation can be seen as a cultural thing that goes past the 20^th century. With The Louvre funds were spent purchase expensive ornamentation and symbols. Subsequently, massive expenditure use on ornamenting buildings would result in to an increased amount of decorated architectural works across the globe.

However, in Adolf Loos would later disagree with economic value placed on ornamented buildings by arguing ornamentation and symbolism added no financial benefits to the buildings. In other words, Loos meant that increased ornamentation and symbols wasted time (labor hours) and economic resources that could have been used in different ways such as improving the architectural designs or expanding the buildings. Through his argument, many architects started to lose interest with ornamentation and this gave rise to un-ornamented architecture works in the 20^th century. Criticizing Tanizaki views about time spent on ornamentation, Loos argues that “labor suffers because no one is prepared to pay its true value” (page.5). He writes this to challenge the society against the excessive dependent on ornamentation which adds no value on a building. He targets laborers and craftsman who spend the most time in ornamentation. In the end, though there is sufficient evidence to support Loos arguments, most of his opinions in the last century changed how architects used to perceive the relevance of ornamentation and symbolism.

Robert Venturi is another popular figure who changed the way people look, think, and perceive the nature of architecture. Not many texts have contributed or defined a historical moment in ways Venturi’s text does. His book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture have been dubbed as the most important piece of architecture since the text Vers Une Architecture of Le Corbusier. That means the book has played a big role in changing this discipline. Unlike Le Corbusier whom the main interest was oriented to the plasticity of volumes, Venturi’s arguments were essentially focused on the urban understanding of concave spaces. According to his book, Venturi cites that his inspiration on urban understanding and symbolism come from Greek’s temple’s archetypal as well as historical opposites; the town porticos in Italy.

Similar to Learning from Las Vegas, Venturi’s text is a key source of postmodernism. He compares complexity and contradiction against picturesqueness or simplification. He claimed that the modernist buildings did not have deep meaning since their puritanical design did not have any sense of irony nor did they have complexity for enriching historical architecture. Venturi opinion had an immediate impact with the dissatisfaction of Modernist building resulting in the destruction of several 14-story slab blocks which had been constructed two decades following the architectural design by award-winning Minoru Yamasaki. Similarly, the rise of postmodernism also led to the demolition of several apartment blocks in North America and various parts in Europe.

Modernism architecture represented cultural identify that many postmodernist buildings. Evidently, even after postmodernism, some corporate continued to commission of towers based on Modernism design has a sign of representing their corporate culture and identity. Indeed, before the 1970s, Modernist was a formal language in the architecture world. In the early 1970s, most enterprises in the US had commissioned the world’s tallest buildings. For instance, the twin towers of the World Trade Center which had been designed by Yamasaki represented the showcased the marvelous works of Modernist architecture. However, these structures would later face myriad criticism with the advancement of postmodernism. With the rise of skyscraper structures, Venturi (with Steven Izenour and Denise Brown) would then publish another text in 1972 known as Learning from Las Vegas which sought to dehumanize architecture by purging it of the limiting purism of historical Modernism (Venturi et al., 1997). In this book, they point out to the commercial billboards as well as the architecture of highways in Las Vegas for guidance. They reintroduced the architecture disciple to the elements of wit, historical reference, and humanity. These elements prompted many architects to follow the lead and adopt populist language which would latter scatter in the 1970s and 80s. For instance, Phillip Johnson and his colleague would then design AT&T building, NY. Similarly, Michael Graves would follow a similar path a design Portland Public Service building in Portland. This shows that Venturi’s texts had a wide-range impact on the current architecture works. Besides, more and more skyscrapers which incorporated historical souvenirs such as swag, Keystone, colonnade, and Belvedere were constructed. Notably, in all his works, Venturi saw the underlined the importance of coloring, ornamentation, and symbolism. This can be seen as more colorful buildings such as Piazza d’Italia by Charles Moore and Alumni Center of UC at Irvine were constructed to reassure the society that they should no longer feel that their culture of the identity of modern architecture was under threat. Moreover, the exhibition titled “The Presence of the Past” gala at Venice in 1980, which had been organized by Venice Biennale and attended by numerous architects and writers including Venturi, Ricardo Bofill, Aldo Rossi, and Charles Moore among others, represented wide-range outlooks but more importantly shared an idea to eliminate the fear of memory where many had thought was end of modern architectural design.

Since the 1980s, there is no model which has received more discussion than Critical Regionalism by Kenneth Frampton (Frampton, 1993). This theory has controversially and passionately been debated since Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction. Inspired by Marxist tradition, Frampton tried to elucidate the dynamics of architectural perspectives into the post-world war by exposing the relation between periphery and center. Close reading on Frampton’s texts unfolds two critical issues. For instance, it denotes that the architect is the one responsible for all creative instincts. In this end, although he criticized the star-system, Frampton operated with the framework of the architect as a genius inventor, who gave some few others credit for the entire original culture.

The ideas of “periphery” and “center” consist of the key perspective of the theory. According to him, it is not easy to escape such dichotomy with the only way out is by resisting the invasion of trends that emanate from the middle with the use of confined features as resistance. Here, it is easier to agree with him when we quote Ricoeur (1991) text that holds that a “hybrid world culture” due to the cross-fertilization occurring between universal civilization in one side and rooted culture on the other side. In this lens, Frampton holds that cross-fertilization can only happen on one peripheral side of the equation; hence, the universal “center” can never be affected or influenced by the periphery. But an obvious question that would arise is how we can define “periphery” and “center” based on Frampton ideas? We can only get an answer for this by exploring and understanding each of passages in his texts and also check possible navigations which have occurred in oceanic spaces and between boundaries. An example of a navigator is Bo Bardi who is famously known for her handcrafted building that pushed technology to its limits. Unlike architect who would seek the works or technologies (a basic concept of Frampton theory) of other individuals, Bardi solved her design problems by using alterity model, where each building was designed following its specific demands.

Responding to a frantic search of stability, most architects came up with their personal styles. Initially, it worked as a good anchor; however, following isolation and mobility, these personal styles brought even bigger problems to the field of architectures Eggener (2002) suggested that there is a long between the concept of modernism and de-constructivism in regards to style; but, there is no distance at all in regards to the heroic architect that formalize the individual interpretation of the social crisis. This is no surprise as de-constructivism indicate there can be no form of communication nor rational discussions in terms of interpretations. When they have placed miles ways one another as well as the development of their personal styles, they will definitely suffer from critical isolation and what is even worse will be the gap between them and the contemporary society. Here, the idea that Frampton tries to raise in his theory of Critical Regionalism which is another anchoring tentative. That is because it operates around the star system where architects develop their individual styles as they try to respond to the surrounding situations and contexts. Nevertheless, the moment that personality is achieved, it should not be changed any further, being applied anywhere. In this end, Frampton’s theory does not resist the current postmodernism in which “Mario Botta designs San Francisco or Cesar Pelli design Kuala Lumpur.”

References

Broadbent, G., Bunt, R. and Jencks, C., 1980. Signs, symbols, and architecture. John Wiley & Sons.

Crouch, D. P., & Johnson, J. G. 2001. Traditions in Architecture: Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania. New York: Oxford University Press.

Eggener, K.L., 2002. Placing resistance: A critique of critical regionalism. Journal of Architectural Education, 55(4), pp.228-237.

Frampton, K., 1993. 20? Toward a Critical Regionalism: Six points for an architecture of resistance. Postmodernism: a reader, 268.

Jencks, C. 2002. The new paradigm in architecture: the language of post-modernism. Yale University Press.

Jencks, C., Jencks, C., Jencks, C. and Jencks, C., 1977. The language of post-modern architecture.

Loos, A., 2014. Ornament and crime (p. 226). Gato Negro Ediciones.

Ricoeur, P., 1991. A Ricoeur reader: Reflection and imagination. University of Toronto Press.

Utaberta, N., Handryant, A.N. and Mydin, M.A.O., 2015. Post Modern Cross Comparative Analysis on the Mosque Ornamentation in Malaysia:(A Case Study of Charles Jencks). In Applied Mechanics and Materials (Vol. 747, pp. 48-51). Trans Tech Publications.

Venturi, R., Robert, I.V., Brown, D.S., Izenour, S. and Steven, R.V.D.S.B., 1977. Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form. MIT press.