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Week 10 – The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

I, I will be king And you, you will be queen Though nothing, will drive them away We can beat them, just for one day We can be heroes, just for one day. One man against the world. One man unwilling to compromise. Rourke the hero. The Marvel Architect. Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ a genre defining piece of Neo-liberal propaganda which would begin to define a generation of political thinking within the United States. It may be somewhat surprising then to find a creative at the centre of the story however there is very little comment trough out the piece on the quality of the architecture. Modernism is used to represent an uncompromising new age. One of the very rare moments of nuance or attempts of subtlety in book (or subsequent film) permits the true reveal of comparisons between modernism and the economic model in favour. In a curious moment when editors at ‘The Banner’ (the newspaper which had previously lead to the destitution of Rourke’s mentor) meet to discuss the sub...
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Week 9 – The medium is the massage by Michael McLuhan

MESSAGE!  MESSAGE NOT MASSAGE! MESSAGE! Massage: the typo in the title retained by McLuhan as if to prove the point entirely. That point being, of course, that medium in which the message is delivered is more important than the message itself. Immediately alarm bells ring. The content is unimportant? Should be disregarded? A moment of further analysis will realise that the message McLuhan is conveying cannot be that easily trivialised into the sound bite newspeak. If one were to attempt to compress McLuhan’s actual message, you may end up concluding with something more akin to: The method of communication has more of an effect on history than one particular message. Not as catchy however much easier to relate too and understand. The main example used to explain McLuhan’s thought process is the invention of the printing press in the 15 th Century. Suddenly information could be ‘mass’ produced. No longer was the written word only the reserve of the aristocracy and clerg...
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Week 8 – The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa by Colin Rowe

Natural vs Customary? The real juxtaposition between modern and classical Architecture? Terms coined by the great sir Christopher Wren, Natural beauty tied to the mathematical principals of classical geometry whereas Customary beauty is defined by the user or environment. Throughout ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, Rowe explores how both classical and modern architecture juggle these same contexts with similar results. Rowe is very much of the previous generation. In a world today where one has to prove his worth in pounds and pence, there isn’t room for the merlot soaked philosophies of the 20 th century academic. The last of his kind, Rowe has become seen as an almost comical figure. However, for all his witticisms, the concepts and ethos became a driver for the start of post modernism, culminating in the work of his former draughtsman James Stirling. So are modernism and classicism just two sides of coin. A slow evolution not uprooting revolution which the early 1900...
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Week 7: Professor Otto Silenus in ‘Decline and Fall’ by Evelyn Waugh

The day before my 19 th birthday, in the long thin final monuments to modernism that made up the studios of England’s most northern school of Architecture, I was perched on a table surrounded by peers yet unknown. The event marked the beginning of the end for any hope I had of living the life of a fully functioning normal member of society. The glass was shattered, or maybe more it was the initial first effort required to move lock mechanism allowing the gates to begin to be prized open. Addressing a room of fresh faced, architecturally innocent and naïve first year students, the head of the faculty of the built environment welcomed us with words which have come to haunt and follow me ever since. “Architecture is a disease! It may take time, but eventually throughout studying it, you will catch it and there is no cure for it.” Nervous laughter rippled through out the room. Ha! What a fantastic line. But obviously it’s just buildings, right? The knowing smirk across the face to...
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Week 6: Jane Rendell - Occupying Architecture (1998) 'doing it, (un) doing it, (over) doing it yourself- Rhetorics of Architectural Abuse'

The context in which Rendell began to explore what ‘doing’ Architecture really means cannot be ignored. At the end of the 1990s, as my earliest memories begin to form, Architecture was even more male dominated than it is today. A profession which in a practical sense had barely changed since the 1960s was beginning to finally enter the information age in earnest as only now was the CAD and modelling systems which are relied on so heavily in today’s society becoming common place. So with a strong feminist movement beginning to rise on the back of ‘Girlpower’ in popular culture (although more and more so this movement is being critiqued into todays media), and maybe more importantly the rise of the most revered female architect, Zaha Hadid, we have the young Jane Rendell comes forward with a radical set of ideas for a profession only just starting to invite change. Rendell’s concept of ‘doing’ architecture, un-doing architecture and then maybe more interestingly the reaction and inter...
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Week 5 Geothe’s Faust: The Tragedy of Development – ‘All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity’ by Marshall Berman

Speed. Speed. Quicker, faster. Speed. Speed. Destroy and progress. Mesphisto’s guide to modernity, or as Berman suggests, a guide to the modern capitalism. The crux of Berman’s exploration of Goethe’s Faust with regards to modernity. In the first of the three elements of Goethe’s Faust, Berman discusses Faust’s recovery from suicidal despair. How the bells of the church returned the happiness of childhood. Exploring the concept from an architectural perspective, is this a manifestation of the need to carry on copying the traditions. A barrier to modernity? As a part of psychological study, in the early 20 th century Sigmund Freud famously was exploring how childhood experiences affect decision making in later life. So is this why many people still hark back for ‘traditional’ architecture? The safety of the childhood memories physically manifesting itself in the style of one’s choice of dwelling (Cost dependant). If we follow the allegory of Goethe’s Faust further, the re-joining...
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Week 4: A Home in the Neon – ‘Air Guitar’ by Dave Hickey

“Somehow, in the few years that I have been living here and travelling out of here, this most un homelike of cities has become to function for me as a kind of moral bottom-line… - as a home, in other words.” Within the first paragraph I can already feel alienated to Hickey’s views. ‘The moral bottom-line’ is not a description I would ever attribute to a home. Whilst he talks of refuge and the references to sanctuary and reassurances chime, a suggestion of the concept of home is you at your worst is troubling. I would describe a true home as an extension to the physical structure. A world full of memory and sentiment, almost a shrine to your ideas, history and aspiration. The place where ‘you’ are at your most ‘you’. A home should be a place where you can leave the darkness at the door, leave elements of your life which challenge the bottom line of your morality. However, in Hickey’s world as he writes as an art critic in the ‘super virtuous high culture of the nineteen nineties’ ...
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