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 tutors, aligned behind awaiting introduction, should have been the first clue.

5 years later and I can only fully endorse the statement. The subject I love has changed how I analyse, hypothesise, communicate… even how I sleep and dress. It consumes you, with little regard consent. So if even the way the most un-qualified ‘Architect’ (please note the quotation mark ARB) feels or acts is enveloped by the subject to a form it becomes identity, an identity very different from others in society despite only being defined from the outside on looker as a vocation, it will be (and most definitely should be!) mocked and parodied.

The finest example of a parody of the modernist Architect is found in the character of Professor Silenus in Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Decline and Fall’. Before exploring the character of Silenus himself, it is worth noting Waugh possessed a deep knowledge of Architectural Modernist theory. He had even reviewed the great Le Corbusier’s ‘City of Tomorrow’ for the Observer and, possibly surprisingly when the giving the book and the theories it publicised a positive review. It’s this almost insider knowledge which pours through Silenus creating the perfect level a parody only very slightly removed from reality.

It is in the second of the 3 parts to ‘Decline and Fall’ where we as the audience are introduced to Silenus. Having only previously had a rejected design a proposal for a chewing gum factory featured in a magazine, a note to the history of modernist  AEG factory helping to launch Behren’s career perhaps, the Professor is hired by Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the wealthy radical modern business woman from the English aristocracy, to design “something clean and square”*. Even before the formal introduction to our main protagonist Peter, we learn that Otto Silenus originates from a wealthy family in Hamburg however he has ran away to London to escape his background to austere one bedroom studio in Bloomsbury (a space to the current young architect would be an opulent dream to reside in). So with a back ground of wealth, displaying an air of un-proven self-proclaimed genius and surviving without sleep (as seems to be the permanent state of the Architectural student), we meet our Architect.

Waugh chooses to inhabit Silenus with only the most extreme of modernist principals. He plays with Le Corbusier’s ‘Machine for living’ in Silenus’ reply when interviewed with the journalist: “The problem with Architecture as I see it, is the problem of all art—the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men.” Throughout the piece Waugh constantly jibes and pokes at the Corbusian modernist. Most successfully with the professor’s obsession with drainage, the machine parts of the building. His favourite part of the building when asked? The drains. And even more comically when Peter converses with Silenus regarding his feelings towards the enigmatic Margot. The professor cannot see why he would find the exterior of Margot any more or less attractive than any other woman as they all have the same digestive system: or the same drainage. Waugh’s in depth knowledge of Le Corbusier’s philosophies shines its brightest with this last observation. Le Corbusier, to allow for point 5: the free façade, would feed the drainage through the centre of a building. Is Waugh suggesting that it is the internal workings has allowed the beauty of the Margot’s façade? Possibly, as Silenus goes on to state how the Margot’s drainage system probably on has ’10 years left’ suggesting that outward beauty is only as lasting as the machinery inside.

It is as the trials and tribulations of Peter near their conclusion both Peter and we as the reader encounter the professor for one last time. In Margot’s Corfu hide away, the all-knowing Silenus, delivers his final lecture to us. The meaning of life. He compares it to a fairground ride found in the United States. A large wooden spinning disc. He pontificates that there are 3 type of people in the world. Suggesting to Paul he should chose the first, to not go on the disc, watch people from the side lines struggle to stay on, live a quiet life of without the trouble of the angular velocity of society. He describes how Margot is on the ride for the thrill for the speed, the danger. Clinging onto the edge of the disc to go as fast as possible with little regard for her own safety. Most people are trying to reach the centre of the disc, where the angular of momentum is at its least, where you can be fully in control. 

Obviously Silenus sees himself at the centre. Looking out at the people and their struggles. The Architect with it all figured out watching as the world revolves around.

Silenus, the tutor to the drunkard Dionysus, Greek God of wine. Silenus, professor to the rich and opulent. The Architect.

*  There is a nice symmetry here with how modernist architecture has been pigeon holed by the civilian (read non architectural) population. Even in contemporary society ‘clean and square’ is often used to dismiss the ideas behind modernism to a style.

Post Script:

Waugh wrote ‘Decline & Fall’ in 1928. A comment on the fall of the feudal England and the remaining aristocracy following the First World War. A world which although still influences modern life has very much been toned down. So in the world of contemporary comedy where do we see the Architect?

Monty Python satired the architect as either the ultra-modernist, similar to Waugh, or as a Free Mason, or even a want to be member. As someone on the edge of the establishment. However in the last half a century society has moved yet again. Neither Waugh’s Silenus nor the creations of the Pythons strike many chords as representative of my peers or even more so as how society see the modern Architect.

The most famous example of the Architect in contemporary comedy would be Josh Radnor’s portrayal of New York Architect Ted Mosby in the hit American hit sitcom ‘How I Met Your Mother’ (2005-2014). Obviously not of the same comic quality of Waugh’s parody or Python’s satire, Ted Mosby will be the image of an Architect that many of my generation grew up with during their teenage years. Here with have the figure of the hopeless romantic, far removed from the views of Silenus. Not with confidence but with agonising anxiety he stresses over details such as whether the correct light bulb for New York skyscraper, the fulfilment of his childhood dream, or in a more comical moment, which pen his practice will use. Not to say he isn’t an intellectual (at one stage in the story his finds happiness as a professor like Silenus), however anytime he dares to enthuse on architectural history or even mention over art forms of inspiration he is met by his peer group making a sound that could be found from one’s central drainage system. There are many things within the show that Architects will turn their nose up at, inaccuracies caused by a writing without the rigor of Waugh’s. And we won’t mention how many times in reply to your response when asked ‘so what do you do?’ I have received the sentence ‘Oh like Ted, on How I Met Your Mother’. However despite all these, at a base level this is the life I know today, the postmodern view of the Architect lives.

So in the early part of the 21^st century, as ‘Decline and Fall’ nears raising its bat to the crowd, the position of the Architect has moved. Slipped from the centre with Silenus, from Python’s Architects of the 60s desperate to become part of the establishment, we come the present day with the Architect clinging onto the edge of the wheel. The decline of the Architect desperate to avoid the fall.