Essential Congruences:

Buildings + Paintings + Cities   

Between Modernity & History

If something can be said to clearly differentiate the modern outlook from the Post-modern outlook [using the terms reluctantly, at the risk of suggesting stylistic notions rather than, as intended, philosophical stand] it is the conception of the historical perspective and the role of the maker relative to the idea of time.

 While it would be an inexact oversimplification to state that modernity [and modernism] lack a basic concern for the value of the past, it is true that time, in the modern mindset, is fundamentally defined in terms of what is yet to come, the always hopeful certainty of the future that defines the resolution and commitment of the actors to think of, and act upon the present [which is always the moment of architectural and artistic creation] as the commencement of the future.  The self-consciousness of time makes the evolution of new tools, new modes of thought a requisite condition.   As the time to construct is thought of as distinct from the past, those new instruments and ideas must necessarily go through detachments of their own.  Such detachments have objective sources [for example, the incorporation of new technologies and materials] as well as ethical sources [for example, the development of the social mission of architecture].  This affects not only the ways in which architecture is expressed, but it also the very essence of the ideas and beliefs that are expressed through architecture.

Modernity, in this sense, establishes itself as different from tradition as it embraces disruption as the preferred option to negotiate time.  It rejects continuity and memory as historical obligations.

At this moment, as an architect and as a teacher, I share both modern resolution and traditional concerns.  I do believe in the future, although I do not think of it as the only viable or desirable force in shaping the present.  I do believe in the past, and the value of history and memory, although I do not think of them as the only explanations of the present.  I do not think of the present as a mere result or consequence of the past, for I still share part of the modern hope.  Likewise, I no longer trust that any future is by definition better or that it should or even could be an independent dimension of time. What I am suggesting is a paradigm that comes to terms with history as our companion and not as our superfluous or burdensome load. 

Perhaps this congruent, mixed and unresolved understanding of time is our strongest asset at this moment of architectural, cultural and economic disorientation.  This model of convergence allows one to be inclusive and expansive.  From modernity we have learned that history is a matter of work, and that it becomes useless when reduced to mere codes that prevent one from the risks and challenges of the creative act.  Also from modernity [from its mistakes], we have learned that without history and memory, the making of new histories – another way of saying “the future” which is the ultimate modern hope, becomes aimless and substantively arbitrary.

The challenge thus, is to construct a meaningful “time” as a context for our work. A time of congruences and inclusivities.  This requires definitions that would turn the present blurriness, the anxieties, the cynicisms, the fascination with heterotopias and distopias into a program of positive action.  Perhaps, our time will prove to be particularly fortunate; open enough to go beyond reductive determinisms and positivisms, while conscious enough to move beyond both serendipitous accident and nihilistic hopelessness.  As architects, as students of design, as painters and most importantly as humanists and citizens, we will require both the moral framework that modernity proactively seeks, and the disciplinary precision that history and tradition bequeath to us.