Looking Past the Primitive Hut

Fundamentals

For the last couple of centuries, a great deal of theoretical architectural discourse has revolved around the concept of the Primitive Hut.  Although this concept has existed since the time of Vitruvius, it entered into serious academic discussion after Laugier used it as the frontispiece of his Essai sur l'Architecture.  It is a fundamental mythologization of architecture.

Although there is absolutely no archeological record of a hut of the type that Laugier described, nor any evidence that anyone prior to the Imperial Romans even theorized the elements of the hut in the manner theorists think about them, it is still an essential key to understanding architectural form.  The ideas that the column is emblematic of the tree and the pediment shed water like the leafy branches above.

However, this is not the only way to mythologize fundamental architectural forms.  Ching, for example, discusses patterns of organization and mathematical proportions.  According to Simon Unwin, there are four fundamental architectural elements; The Bower, the Hearth, The Altar and the Performance Space.  These are then housed in enclosures to create the basic architectural forms of the House, the Temple and the Theatre. 

But it is Unwin's fundamental elements that I am particularly interested in here.  Unwin looks at these from a purely pragmatic, formal analysis in much the same way the architects who have followed Laugier used the Primitive Hut as a formal derivation to explain the Orders, and ultimately even Le Corbusier's Five Points.  But looking at these fundamental elements as formal only completely ignores the cultural context, and what these elements tell us about ourselves.

Before I begin exploring this, I want to discard one of Unwin's elements, the performance space.  If we wish to go back to the most ancient roots, the hearth in it's broader context was the prototypical performance space, where tales were told around the fire.  In their most primitive forms, the Bower, the Hearth and the Altar were the three fundamentals, the performance space followed behind these three as social structure evolved.

I also want to point out, in the beginning, these fundamental elements would not have been "architecture" in the way we currently describe it.  However, if you want to state that architecture is any alteration of the natural environment for human use, then these elements, even in their most primitive state would be architecture. 

I should note here, that I don't personally restrict architecture to purely human actions on the environment.  I consider beaver dams, termite mounds and birds nests to be architecture.  In fact, any modification of the environment by deliberate action for the purpose of habitation could be considered architecture.  Similarly, any alteration of the environment for non-functional purposes could be considered art.  And yes, animals do make art, from Bower Birds lavishly decorating their nests to dogs that deliberately place their toys in specific geometric patterns.

To return to the point, we would probably not see the most primitive of these elements as architecture; a pile of branches for sleeping, a ring of stones to protect a fire, a specific mark on a tree or in a cave, these are what would have been the original forms of these elements.

However, it is not the physical that interests me, it is the significance of them that begins to tell us about the societies.  As I have stated before, architecture is a pure cultural container.  How it is arranged, what it is made out of, even the relationships between uses in proximity tell us volumes about what a society valued, how they viewed the world, what sort of social structure existed.  In terms of pre and proto literate societies, or for ones for which we cannot decipher the written language, it is the only key to understanding them.

But these fundamental elements are also the fundamental elements of mythologization of built form.   Myth the ties of man to man, man to God and man to himself.   Then, in a more meta-analysis, when you examine the role of all the myths aggregated, you discover the overarching understanding of the relationship man to nature, which can be expanded to describe man's place in the cosmos.  For example, a broad reading of Greek Mythology indicates a view that Man is at the mercy of a very capricious an unpredictable universe, whereas Egyptian Mythology shows a very hierarchical, ordered worldview.

Each one of these roles of myth can be tied into the fundamental architectural forms.  

First, we will look at the hearth.  The hearth is the gathering place for the band. (And the period we are talking about would have been band level societies which are the most primitive.)  This form facilities the role of the relationship of man to man.  Around the hearth, the rules of conduct for the band are laid down.  Whether or not they are explicitly stated, children in the fire circle learn from their elders appropriate behavior in relationship to each other.  Adults who violate the behavioral norms are sanctioned.  Problems are addressed and plans are made.  Social hierarchies are established, maintained and sometimes even overthrown.  Around the hearth, all aspects of how one member of society relates to any other are established.

Moving on, we have the Altar.  In primitive societies, this would have been a sacred tree, pool or cave, or some other object in the environment that would have housed the spirit of the supernatural.  In other words, the altar would have been the band's fetish object.  (Remember, a fetish has no relationship to how we use the word today, but described an object that literally houses a God.)  This fundamental element describes the relationship of man to God.  The forms and ceremonies related to worship, even the very nature of that relationship is addressed at the altar.  For example, does the shaman hold dominion over the God, commanding and summoning it, or is the shaman the supplicant begging for intercession?  Is the ritual highly formal or is it more casual?  These are the relationships laid out by the altar and form the second purpose of myth.

The final relationship that is described by myth is the most esoteric, man to himself, and it is given form by the Bower.  It can be said that dreams are how we understand ourselves and how we process the experiences of our lives, and the Bower is the space given over to dreams.  Whereas the first two elements look outwards and upwards, this final element looks inwards.  Sleep is an absolute universal, but how we sleep tells us about our relationships to ourselves, i.e. how we care for our bodies when we cannot consciously protect ourselves.   As such, the location of the Bower begins to tell us where the danger is, on the ground, in the sky, in the earth. 

And this then begins the pivot to the final role of myth in architecture, which is found in the aggregate of understanding all three elements taken together, how man relates to nature or in broader terms, how man is placed in the cosmos.  Does the society view itself as secure or in peril?  Do they dominate or are they dominated?  Are they a part of a greater nature, or are the separate from it?  When we examine Hearth, Altar and Bower we can build a larger image of how the society views their place. 

As societies evolve, these fundamental forms also evolve.  The Hearth becomes the Hall, developing into the Court, the Capitol, the Forum, and through separation from the fire and union with the Altar, the it transforms into the Theatre.  (This is because ancient theatre was a scared rite)  The Altar becomes the Temple, the Church the Cathedral.  The Bower becomes the House, the Castle, the Palace.   But even when this happens, the fundamental forms are maintained, even if abstracted beyond recognition. 

And these fundamental elements dictate the architectural forms of even modern buildings.  How man relates to man dictates whether the administrative spaces place all people on the same level, or if it reinforces a strict hierarchy.   How man relates to God determines the ritual space that surrounds the altar, if it is centered on ritual and procession, or if it is a gathering of a congregation.  The Bower defines the house, as the purpose of the home is for rest and refreshment.

By looking at the basics, and their mythological purpose, we can begin to analyze all societies, even modern ones, through their built form.

Architectural Tupperware

Containers

Architecture is one of the ultimate cultural containers; it both represents and holds firm our society.  It is an absolute expression of who we are, our value system, our ideals, our aspirations.  It is also the thing that circumscribes our daily lives.  In this, I do want to state, I am not being an environmental determinist claiming that architecture makes us who we are.  Instead, I am making the opposite claim, that who we are determines our architecture, and that then architecture we create imposes boundaries on us.

Some might argue that art is the true container of culture: it challenges us, it embodies our ideals, it represents, and possibly abstracts, our culture; it stimulates thought and discourse.  All of these are true, but the one thing that art lacks is the connection to the practical.  By it's very nature, art is an object of ornament, not of function.  This is not to say that art is superfluous, it is very necessary, it is just that art exists for it's own sake. 

Architecture does not.  Architecture straddles the line between the practical necessities of life and the ornament of existence.  As Adolph Loos would say, "art should challenge, architecture should be comfortable."

Some might argue the opposite side, that technology is the actual container of culture: it demonstrates our knowledge; it shows our application of that knowledge; it celebrates our achievements; and in some cases, it fundamentally makes life possible.  All of these things are true also, but technology lacks the poetic.  It is missing an essential element of grace and beauty.  Technology is an object of function, not ornament.

Architecture also does not do this.  Again, it straddles the line.  It embodies the practical knowledge necessary to create buildings, but it also contains the beauty that pure engineering lacks.

Then there are those who would argue that writing, poetry and literature, are the true embodiment of culture, and in that I must agree, they are.  However, literature is just another form of architecture, in the sense that both are directly derived from the ancient art of storytelling.  (I would like to credit my friend Patrick with the concept that all art has it's root in the telling of stories.)  I am not claiming that architecture is constructed poetry or frozen music, merely that the two derive from the same source.

Writing is the architecture of the mind, buildings are the architecture of the physical.  They both employ structure, rules, form in the purpose of creating beauty.  A poorly crafted poem will collapse under its own weight just as quickly as poorly crafted building.

It is no coincidence that buildings and writings are the primary tools to dissect and understand a past culture.  They are the two fundamental sources used in archaeology to reconstruct the past.

To examine the first mode of architecture as a cultural container, I will address how architecture manifests essential aspects of society.

First I would like to discuss how architecture embodies our value systems.  As an example, I will look at the development of the kitchen over the last one hundred years and chart how it displays changes in societal roles.  I am going to use this time frame, because this is the period after the kitchen developed as a room separate from the main living space, as it had been in colonial times for all but the wealthy.  It is also after the kitchen stopped being hidden as the realm of servants for the middle classes, as it was in Victorian times.  This period is the time when the gas stove, refrigerator and indoor plumbing transformed the kitchen. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, the kitchen was typically a very small room that could only hold a small number of people comfortably.  This was true even in houses of the wealthy, as shown in Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock house.  Further, the kitchen was relatively isolated from the rest of the house, segregated from the main living spaces by at least doors, if not actually by a butler's pantry.

This design showed the minimal value placed on the kitchen and more importantly, the minimal value of the women doing the cooking.  A common observation was "exiling the women to the kitchen."  This reflected societal norms of the men retiring to the parlor to discuss important matters, while the women went into the kitchen to work at cleaning up. 

In fact, the design of the house showed the sexual segregation typical of society at the time, where the men and the women typically shared space only during the meal, but were separated by the architecture both before and after.  And sometimes they were not together even then.  In my father's family, if there was not enough space at the table, the women ate in the kitchen.  The architecture limited all interaction.

As we moved into the second half of the 20th century, the kitchen began to change.  First, the kitchen transformed to celebrate both technological achievement and plenty.  While still strictly separated from the rest of the living spaces, it nonetheless began to become more of a focal point for the display of technology; electric stoves, wall ovens, dishwashers, trash compactors, a host of small appliances, supposedly labor saving devices, actually became status symbols to display in a new kitchen.  Even though socialization would not occur there, everyone had to see the new stuff in the kitchen and admire the achievement of the family who could afford it.

Additionally, stoves, ovens and refrigerators increased in size to accommodate the more plentiful food that needed to be stored and prepared.  To understand this change, I have a bread dish that belonged to my grandmother that she used in the 30's.  This dish  is small, it can only hold six or eight slices of bread, and those slices would have been cut in half.  It was a way to elegantly display a small amount of food.  Today, a bread plate would be able to accommodate an entire loaf of French bread, possibly even two.

But the most dramatic shift was the change that began in the 80's and 90's, when cooking moved into the social realm.  No longer were women exiled to the kitchen, and segregated from the men, now both sexes mingled and the kitchen became a prime social space.  In the shift to the great room concept of the new millennium, the kitchen is now often the main entertaining space in the home.

This shift shows the massive transformation of attitudes.  The kitchen has returned to it's Colonial American roots, where the activities of the home revolve around the hearth, now transformed into the island.  The change in kitchens shows the change in the values of society, where it is now important for an entire family or a group of friends to share space, even when work is occurring.   

My grandmother would never have had her entire family in the kitchen, it wouldn't have been proper because it was a working room.  I would never not have my friends in my kitchen, for the same basic reason, it would not be proper, but now because it is the social room.  The transformation of the kitchen in the house shows the shift in cultural ideals.

The change in the kitchen also shows a shift in our aspirations.  In the days of strictly defined gender roles, rooms had gender determinatives.  Certain rooms were for men, most of the house actually, and certain rooms were for women, chiefly the kitchen, sewing room and the kids rooms.  At that time, societal aspirations and norms were built around the concept of a man's home is his castle.  Our architecture reflected this.

Today, our aspirations are for a non-gender segregated society.  We are  tearing down the walls of sexism, and in doing so, have torn down the walls around the kitchen.  We are reflecting the hope for an equal society through an architectural expression that creates equality in the space.  Now the whole family can be together, and work together, in the modern kitchen.

But container has another meaning, it can also mean to hold back; to contain an idea in a limiting sense.  To demonstrate this, I will stay with the kitchen.   The shift in kitchen design lagged years behind the shift in societal roles, and in fact, it is not fully penetrated even yet because there are still millions of old style kitchens across the country.  In a very real sense, the delay in the shift of the physical puts a brake on the shift of the cultural.

In homes where the kitchen still is of the design and has the separation of the old

kitchens, the patterns of life in those houses still reflects the old system of segregation.  It may be the man doing the cooking, but regardless, the genders are still separated before and after the meal.  Socialization is still fragmented by the spaces.

Even in old houses that have large kitchens, like mine, there is still an odd disjointing, where everyone crowds into the kitchen, so a choice must be made between comfort or standing around the island in the kitchen.  There is no ability for everyone to be together, but engaged in different activities as they would be in an open concept house.

In this sense, our architecture also contains culture, by slowing down its transformation.  I am not going to claim that this is a good thing or a bad thing, just that the built environment can slow the societal changes, if for no other reason than we cannot afford to rebuild our entire world every time the culture shifts.

I could use countless other architectural examples of this embodiment of culture.  You can see it in the change from the corner store to the big box store, the parish church to the large mega-church, the grand civic buildings to the modest office structures that now serve as centers of government.  Each of these changes represents a serious shift or evolution of cultural values.

The architecture becomes a lens, magnifying our society.  Though our architecture, we can analyze our entire value system and the patterns of our lives.  But architecture can also become a prison, locking us into patterns that are no longer valid, but that we are unable to change, because the architecture confines us to the old forms.

We build buildings that fit our lives at the moment, then those buildings shape the patterns of the next generation.  It is a cycle that is at once elevating and limiting, and it is a cycle that we must understand.

Can you find Nirvana in Utopia?

New Urbanism

In my last blog post I wrote about nostalgia, and how the imagination of a past that never was is influencing the course of the future.  In this post I want to examine one of the ultimate expressions of nostalgia, and how the imagined past is destroying the neighborhoods of today.

The idea of New Urbanism is a Utopian vision of the American neighborhood.  Which brings me to the question, can you find Nirvana in Utopia?

First for those of you who may not be familiar with New Urbanism, I will sketch it out for you.  First, it advocates a slightly higher density than the average suburb, with six to eight houses to an acre, as opposed to the standard three to four.  It prescribes neighborhood stores, preferably in walking distance to the residents.  Garages go in the back, off of alleys, because garage doors and driveways destroy neighborhood cohesion.  In the same vein, the front of the house should have a large porch, to promote neighborliness.  White picket fences, tree lined streets and an overall walkability dominate.  In short, it is Seaside, Florida, which was one of the first and most influential New Urbanist projects.

It is a completely hollow, and overly precious answer to the suburban condition.

Please don't think that I am advocating traditional, postwar suburbia, which is also hollow and on top of it, soul-killing, but the answer cannot be a false recreation of a model that ceased to be valid when Truman was president.

There are many problems with New Urbanism, that it doesn't actually stop sprawl, that it still promotes an environmentally unsustainable lifestyle, and that it reinforces some very bad demographic patterns, but one of the most important is that it is a complete nostalgia fabrication.  It attempts to wind back the clock, through environmental determinism.

In that regard, it is the bastard child of Pruett Igoe, which was the first "housing project."  The project was based on the idea that if you take people out of the slums, and put them in good architecture that's designed to inspire them, they will become better and happier people.

It was a complete failure within a decade.  It was so bad that it had to be imploded in the early 70's.  (On a side note, Minoru Yamasaki had two buildings that he was noted for, Pruett Igoe and the World Trade Center, both of which met a visually similar end.)

New Urbanism draws from the same deterministic roots as the housing project; both envision altering the patterns of human behavior through design.  If you make everything in walkable distances, and make those walks visually interesting, people will stop using their cars and walk to the store.  If you put the garages in the back, and add large front porches, people will sit on them and get to know their neighbors.  If you put people in traditional turn of the century neighborhoods, they will stop having modern problems and live a traditional happy turn of the century life.

First I would like to deconstruct those propositions. 

Whether or not the store is in walkable distance, people will still drive there.  I have lived in New York City, and trust me, if you have an alternative to lugging your groceries several blocks, or more, you will take it.  You will find freedom in not having to stop by the store every day for stuff to cook for dinner.  Add in dragging along a couple of cranky children, whom social services frowns on you leaving at home alone, and you have a recipe for a very unpleasant afternoon.  Driving to the store for groceries is one of life's major conveniences, and one that most people are not ready to abandon, no matter how pleasant the walk might be.

And I would like to add in a tangentially related complaint.  The car is not the enemy to sustainability, it is the internal combustion engine, and our desire for a single family detached residence.  I hear many "green" people say that we need to get rid of the car, because it is the cause of all of environmental ills.  They advocate that no one should have a car, and everyone should walk or use mass transit.

There are two problems with this attitude.  First, except for the environmental zealots, this attitude will turn off the majority of Americans.  Even people who care about the environment will turn away if you tell them that in order to be green, they have to give up a car, even a hybrid or electric.  Second, all of our cities, with the exception of the borough of Manhattan and part of San Francisco were designed based on the car.  Mass transit for everyone will not work in most cities.  To make it work, you would have to demolish everything built after about 1940, and rebuild it at a Manhattan density.  All of that reconstruction would take far more resources than finding clean sources of energy to power the car.

Getting rid of the car is another nostalgic impulse that is false; the idea that getting rid of the car, and returning to a pedestrian centered lifestyle of the past will make cities better.  This is a false re-imagining of the past because, in America at least, we have always had personal transportation.  People had horses and sometimes buggies.  They had bicycles, which are still acceptable to the environmentalist, even though people on bikes are every bit as rude on the road as a car. (Even though they seem to not think so, they are still bound by all of the same road rules as a car, including stopping at stoplights and obeying speed limits.)  But the upshot is, most people have always had access to some sort of private transportation, at least for in-city transit.

This is not to say that we should not have mass transit.  Alternative transportation should be a part of any new development, but it is not a panacea for all of the problems of cities.  But even the vaunted streetcar suburbs still had plenty of private transportation as well.  For example, I live in one of the streetcar suburbs in Denver, and almost every house in the neighborhood has a carriage house that is as old as the main house.  Most of them held actual carriages in the day. 

Moving back to the problems with New Urbanism, the porch in the front, garage in the rear set up does not inherently promote neighborliness.  Yes, in the past, people sat on their front porches, but it had nothing to do with preference, and had everything to do with what the backyard used to be.  This is again where nostalgia fails us, because we do not understand the original purpose of the backyard.

The backyard in 1900 was not a place you would want to spend time in.  It contained the kitchen compost pile, probably some chickens, and maybe a pig and quite likely a horse.  The carriage house would hold a horse drawn cart or buggy, and probably a stable space.  Prior to about 1870, it would also have had the family's privy.  In other words, it would stink like manure and rotting food, both of which would be used to fertilize the kitchen garden.  In the hot summer, you can imagine the stench.

Because of this, people would spend time on the front porch because the smell would be less.  Not gone, because of the piles of horse manure in the streets, but that was at least a distance from the house, and you could plant roses and other fragrant flowers between you and those horrific hills.  Why do you think the traditional home has fragrant vines and climbing roses draped around the porch?

Also, in the days before air conditioning, sitting (and sleeping) on the porch was the only way to escape the oppressive heat of the inside of the house.  They weren't out there to enjoy the neighbors, or to participate in community engagement, they were trying to avoid heatstroke.  The human interaction was a side effect, not the reason for the behavior.

The last issue, that people will be happier in traditional neighborhoods is woven from the whole cloth of nostalgic reinvention.  As I discussed in the last blog, people in the past had many of the same problems as we have today.  Also, the neighborhood that we are recreating in New Urbanism was not the norm one hundred years ago, it was the exception.   Most people lived either on farms or in crowded tenements.  The New Urbanist vision was actually only available to a small segment of middle class and working class people.  Trust me, those people had just a many problems as we do today, and they had to deal with them without indoor plumbing.  Saying that a neighborhood plan can solve societies ills is the same sort of wrongheaded environmental determinism that has failed over and over throughout the decades.

It is Utopia, which actually means "not place" in Greek.  It is an imaginary or fictional place, someplace that cannot be real, but only envisioned.  The use of utopian to describe the New Urbanist vision is very fitting, but for all of the wrong reasons.

They are trying create a place that never was for people who do not live in the way that they want to prescribe.  For good or for ill, the patterns of our lives have shifted.  We are not going to sit on front porches and talk to our neighbors while escaping the heat inside, we are going to crank up the air conditioning and sit on Facebook chatting with our virtual friends.  The garages in the back are not going to make walkable streets, it is simply going to make the street appear uninhabited.  This is because we will still drive everywhere, even if it is only a few blocks away because we no longer have the time for a meandering walk to wherever we are going.  And with the garage in the back, we will drive into the garage and go into the house through the back door.  We may never set foot in the front yard, except to mow it, and if we have a service for that, we may never go there.  And now that mailboxes are conglomerated in a hut at the neighborhood entry, we don't even need to go out front to get the mail, we just swing by the box on the way in or out.

The patterns of suburbia are very empty, which is the actual meaning of Nirvana; the word does not mean heaven, it means nothingness.  We do not have actual engagement with the people around us, we stay locked in our air-conditioned sanctum sanctorum, except when forced to venture out for supplies or to earn money to pay for this lifestyle.

I understand the motivations of the New Urbanists; they understand the hollowness of modern suburban life.  But the problem is, rather than addressing it by developing new typologies, they are fueling the fire by producing a new suburb that only differs from others in terms of being slightly more dense and somewhat more attractive.  Even though environmental determinism is a false syllogism, urban planners can attempt to create vibrant communities by inferring current behavior patterns and developing their designs from them.

Unfortunately, they are as caught up in nostalgia as everyone else today is.  They operate from the idea that the neighborhood of 1900 is the greatest and best model to work from, and adamantly try to recreate it.

And because of this, the answer to my earlier question is yes, you can find Nirvana in Utopia, as long as you understand that what you are finding is nothingness in noplace.

Thinking About Architecture

Cognition

Our thought processes are enframed by our language and our language literally controls not only how we can think about things, but literally what we CAN think about at all. 

Infants are like animals, they think in images, not words.  Mother, father, food, toy, all are cognitively described by pictures or moving images; there is no verbal component.  Animals never cease thinking this way, nor, according to Temple Grandin, do autistic people, which is why they have so much difficulty in communicating.  But normal humans begin to swap out image based thought for linguistic thought around the age of three, which, interestingly enough is the point where solid memories begin to form.  (I can remember things before the age of three, because I am very strange, but those pre-verbal memories are a series of disconnected dreamlike images that make very little sense on anything more than an emotional level.)

But as we develop, we can only think about things that we have words to describe.  We know this from studying other cultures.  Cultures who have no word for the color purple cannot differentiate it from blue or red, depending on the mixture, with a red hue falling in the red category and a blue based purple being termed blue.  At best they might call it a shade of blue or red, but would not even consider it to be a different color.  The same goes for American men, who for the most part could not even begin to differentiate eggshell from bone.  The average American woman probably could, because they spend far more time learning color terminology.  An artist or designer probably could identify thousands of different colors that only varied by minute differences, because they spend years learning the words for them.

Because language enframes cognition, if you control the language, you control the thought.  George Orwell used this to maximum effect in the novel "1984," where, to stamp out crimethink, the Inner Party of Oceania developed Newspeak.  Their rationale was that if you had no words to describe a concept, you could not even think about it; if the word freedom does not exist, how do you know you are a slave?

This is a very powerful concept, but it goes deeper than that.  Not only does language enframe thought, it affects attitudes and culture.  I've discussed this before, where using the word entitlements to describe welfare and Social Security increases negative feelings towards them because of the very connotation of the word "entitlement."

But it is the cultural connection that I want to explore here.  I have been talking with some of my foreign born students about architecture, and in those conversations, I have realized how much learning about architecture in English is enframing the process.

In talking with a former thesis student from Saudi Arabia, he mentioned that he was unable to discuss architecture in Arabic, and to be able to talk about it, he had to switch to English.  This linguistic shift altered his cognitive patterns, he literally can not contemplate architecture in his native tongue.

How does this affect design?  Consider the fact that language is one of the primary markers of culture.  The entire value system of a society is delineated by the language.  Arabic is a far more sacred language than English, which, in Eliade's definition is more profane.  Arabic weaves Allah (God) and Islamic belief into everyday speech in a way that English does not (or at least hasn't for a very long time; how often do you hear someone say goodbye with the term "Go with God?")

Therefore, when you enframe architectural thought into English, you are re-casting that thought into a very Western mold.  Very significant aspects of identity get lost in translation, in fact, they cease to exist.  There is a profound cognitive shift.

In our conversations, he was talking about how the architecture of the Middle East is increasingly being stuffed into Western drag, and the hallmarks of Saudi Arabian architectural identity are being lost.  We determined that a large part of it was because a significant number of Saudi architects were being trained in the West.  And further, the ones being trained in Saudi Arabia are either being taught in English (as he is planning to do when he becomes a professor) or the very concepts of design that are taught in the West are not being passed on, because they lack the language to do so.

This loss of identity, though, goes beyond style, into the realms of essence.  There is something essential (essence) being lost, because the cognition is occurring in an alien language.  Copying style is only part of the story.  For example, Soviet architects drew heavily on the International Style of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus, but there is still an essential difference between Western Modernism and Soviet architecture.  The Soviet architects learned their craft in Russian, and specifically in Soviet Russian.  Their value system was made manifest in their architecture.  The further back in time you go, the more apparent these differences are, where you get even regional variations, that could be tied to dialectical differences.

To further explore this concept, I spoke with two of my current thesis students, who come from Iceland.  They told me that when they were back home at Christmas, when they would talk to Icelandic architects, they would have to fall back on English words for about fifty percent of their conversations.  They did not have words in Icelandic to describe the ideas they were discussing.  Interestingly, until recently, there were no architectural programs in Iceland, and even now they only offer a Bachelors, and no Masters degrees.  Therefore, almost all of their architects are trained in either Europe or America.

And consequently, just like Saudi Arabia, their architectural identity is vanishing, to be replaced with architecture that is alien to their country.  This is an even more interesting case, because Iceland is a European country, with far more in common with both the Continental countries and America than the Saudi's have.

And yet, they feel like their architectural identity is diminishing.  Except for vernacular architecture, there is no Icelandic style.  This is in contrast to Europe, where, for example, there are noticeable differences between English and German deconstructivism, countries that have large portions of their architectural communities trained domestically.

Language enframes thought; thought enframes design; design creates the built environment.  When you design in another language, the architecture lacks cultural identity, or more precisely, has an alien identity.  Unwittingly, today's architects are beginning to achieve Le Corbusier's dream of Universal Architecture.

There is a growing blandness in architecture today.  You can travel anywhere in the world and see much the same sort of architecture.  I think part of this sameness is the result of language.  If we thought about architecture in the language of the country it was being built in, the architecture would be enframed in the culture and value system of its place.

And I think we would value it more.

The Essence of Architecture

Identity

Architecture is a cultural container.  At it's purest form, it is a built representation of our value system, our cultural beliefs, our social structure and even the patterns of our lives.  It represents our views of cosmology, theology, sociology and psychology.   It demonstrates our technology and our science.

In short, you can look at architecture and determine a large amount of information about the culture that built it. 

On a side note, the buildings are one of the main resources available to archeologists.  The buildings, coupled with the artifacts contained within, are typically the only resources you have to understand a pre-literate society.

But why is architecture such a significant identity marker?

The answer comes from the Theory of Essences.  Before I explore how this impacts architecture, I will briefly cover what this term means.

The origins of this theory date back to pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, which addressed what could be termed the "Folk Theory of Essences."   First of all, folk theory refers to an informal theory (as opposed to a scientific theory) and it typically an unconscious characterization.  In the folk theory of essences, you essentially say that there are certain characteristics that define something. 

For example, there are certain identifiers that make an animal a dog.  You are probably not even consciously aware of how you determine the animal bounding toward you is a dog, you just know it is.  It is something we learn as a very small child.  If we came from culture that did not differentiate between dogs and cats, we might have very different folk theory of essences referring to them.  Perhaps we would categorize them as small animals that live in our houses; it might even be possible that we would categorize the small lap dogs with cats while the large working breeds might get lumped in with livestock.

But at the root, the folk theory of essences allows us to identify what something is in relationship to other things like it.  The theory of essences is at the root of ontology.  Dogs and chairs can have very different appearances, but when we see any dog or any chair, we are probably going to know what it is.  (However, don't even get me started on Chinese Cresteds, those are not dogs, they're freaks of nature.)

According to Lakoff, there are three things that characterize what an essence is: essences are substances; essences are forms; and, essences are patterns of change.  These three things are what we analyze to categorize an object.  Everyone does it, it is a part of our psycho-social makeup.  Humans are pattern makers, it's how our brains work.

The folk theory of essences gives us an ability to understand the world around us at a basic level, but for the expert, the theory of essences needs to be combined with Aristotle's theory of categories.  This theory refers to a set of necessary conditions and inherent properties that define something.  We are able to identify a dog by simple characteristics, but a biologist has a far stricter categorization that is necessary to define an animal as a dog.  And sometimes, as in the case of moths and butterflies, even biologists can't actually work up the exact categorical differences.

It should be noted that the theory of essences is not the entire foundation of science, because, as in the moth/butterfly example, these essences do not tell the entire story.  The theory of essences informs scientific thought, but it is not the entirety of scientific theory.  But for fields like architecture, the theory of essences lies at the core of the profession. 

This is where the folk theory of essences comes in, and where it combines with naturalized culture.  Most Americans can look at a strip mall or a church and know exactly what it is.  There are cultural markers that we understand through the folk theory of essences that identify a building for it's purpose.  If we took someone from a vastly different culture, or a different point in history, they would have no idea what the building was or how it was used.  (There is a wonderful book to this effect called the "Motel of the Mysteries" where a group of archaeologists from the future completely misinterpret a motel as a burial complex.  You should see what they think the toilet lid is used for.)

Every group of people is encultured to understand the essences of the objects that surround them.  No one could function without this awareness, because it would mean that every time we encountered a chair that looked different from any chair we had seen before, we would not recognize it as a chair and we would have no idea how to use it.  This explains why, when we excavate objects belonging to non-literate societies, we often cannot figure out how they were used.  This leads to the typical archaeologists dodge, "it must have been ceremonial."  It probably wasn't, but we have no way to understand it's purpose, because we do not understand it's essence.

The architect, on the other hand, cannot simply rely on the folk theory of essences.  Architects, just like any other professional, must understand the expert theory of essences as it relates to their profession.  Architects must do more than recognize the cultural markers that identify a church, they must understand those markers, and understand how to manipulate them without violating their essences.

This is one of the great failings of modernism.  Modernists tried to turn their backs on cultural markers, especially in non-Western cultures such as Chandigarh.  By attempting to remove cultural identity from architecture, they removed many aspects of it's essence.  It is interesting to note, however, eventually culture catches up.  Now we have accommodated Modernism into our folk theory of essences about architecture and we can understand it better.  We can look at a Modernist building and categorize it through our redefined cultural markers, but this understanding took years to penetrate into naturalized culture.

But at the core, the theory of essences is something that architects cannot ignore.  To create architecture that the public can engage, the architect must understand and apply this theory in an expert manner.  An architect can create a church that looks nothing like the traditional church, but he or she must include enough markers for the regular person to feel that the space is sacred.

This is why architects need a diverse education, they must be able to understand all of the factors that feed into our understanding of culture, and by extension, our understanding of architecture.  The architect must enframe society into their buildings, to allow their buildings to help define society. 

It is a powerful cycle.