Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

Chapter 1 Buildings have meaning

Whenever we venture out into the world, we set out from home, and compare the unfamiliar things we meet with things that we already know. The home is charged with meaning, because it is the basis of what we know, and is closely involved with the most personal aspects of our lives. It has witnessed our indignities and embarrassments, as well as the face that we want to show the outside world. The home has seen us at our worst, and still shelters and protects us, so we feel secure there, and have surprisingly strong feelings for it, even though they go unnoticed most of the time. The same feeling can be invested in other things, and they too can contribute to the feeling of ‘being at home’. Anything that we recognize as familiar, even something as immaterial as a tune, can somehow become ingrained, so that it becomes somehow a part of where we are, and if it is portable, like a tune, or a memorable episode in a novel, or an idea of how it is right to behave, then these things are part of who we are. We carry these immaterial things around with us, along with an idea of home. The building that we call home we leave in one place, and when we wander we wander away from it. A nomadic tribe, carrying its tents along with it, has an altogether different sense of what home is, but ‘we’ (those of us with a home that stays put) can feel at home in surroundings that are not actually our own, if they have familiar characteristics, whether or not they actually look like the places where we live. If I have a deeply ingrained expectation that I will hear a family or neighbours around me, making their own human noises as they go about their own lives, then I might find myself disturbed by the eerie silence to be found in an isolated house, or worried by the creaking of unfamiliar timbers, juddering of strange plumbing, hooting of owls, or scampering feet that I hear in the night. There are many aspects to the home, and the actual solid building is only a part of it. The thing that matters most about my home is that I know it, and I do not think about that most of the time, only really noticing it when something changes, such as when I move house, or when I have unfamiliar visitors and cannot behave with my usual levels of freedom. I have to acknowledge different (temporary) thresholds as I move about the house, if I don’t want to walk in and surprise them. Business hotels try to make their rooms consistently the same, so that we start to feel at home in the whole hotel chain, not just in one building, even if we are in distant and unfamiliar parts of the world that we have never visited before. We know what to expect and more or less where we will find it, so we can continue with the minimum of disruption, and have contact with local character in controlled and limited doses, returning to a temporary substitute ‘home’ in the hotel. We can use our intuition, and it will work. Moving in an unfamiliar culture always turns up little moments of disorientation, such as when the disreputable-looking man in the bar claims that Margaret Thatcher is his mother as well as mine (which he seems to mean as a gesture of camaraderie) or a motor cycle screeches to a halt and I am asked, puzzled, why I’m not in a taxi — a question no one has ever asked me in Europe. These moments are stimulating, in their way, and turn out to be memorable, but they remind me that I’m a long way away from home and the things I know. It is no wonder that the best travel writers always turn out to have a taste for the surreal, which can be turned into humour, anxiety, or enchantment, but is always a state of mind to be passed through, and is never quite the state of serenity associated with being at home.

To set out on a journey is one of life’s great pleasures, holding out as it does the prospect of making discoveries and finding fresh stimulation; and returning home is also a pleasure, but of a different order. We would feel more distress if we were unable to return home than if we had never managed to set out, because ‘home’ is such an important reference point, and if we are deprived of it then we have incalculable problems of disorientation, which do not end when we find a new shelter. Moving house involves vague but persistent feelings of things not being quite right, which are quite different from knowing that one is visiting a strange place and will return home tomorrow. It involves finding a new set of habits, and therefore becoming a slightly different person. The building is only part of the story. It is caught up in a variety of activities, both physical and mental, that influence how we feel about that particular place. Architecture involves this cultural aspect of buildings, which can range from something very personal and idiosyncratic to something that everyone seems to agree upon. We are shaped by the culture that we grow up in, and by the culture in which we participate, whether we think about it or not — and most of the time we don’t think about it at all. In fact we are least aware of this at home. It is when we travel that we see that other people do things differently, and this can be disconcerting. In a western shopping mall we do not expect to be touched, but in a North African souk the shopkeepers sometimes reach out and tap your elbow or grasp your arm, to attract attention, which I found disconcerting. It upset my ingrained sense of what was proper, and because all the shopkeepers seemed to do it, it felt as if there was a conspiracy, compounded of course by the fact that they spoke to one another in a secret language that I didn’t understand. This trivial paranoia is dispelled with a little knowledge and a little thought, but the ingrained instincts affect one’s feelings before the rational thought does: I felt threatened, and knew that I shouldn’t, but had to keep telling myself not to feel that way. The feeling wears off after a while, and if I had been brought up in the other culture, it would have been the self-evidently ‘natural’ way to behave, and I might have wondered when I visited a western shopping mall, why everyone was avoiding me: what did they think was wrong with me? In architecture, as in any other culture, our sense of ‘how things should be’ develops from our experience. Each gesture that we make means something, but the meaning depends on the culture in which the gesture is understood. Architecture is gesture made with buildings.

A culture, in the sense that I mean here, need not involve a great many people. It might be vague and vast, as it would be if one were to want to contrast European culture with that of, say, Latin America; but equally, it might just involve a few people who have something in common and who therefore exchange glances and knowing smiles when, say, a teacher or an elderly relative says something that was not intended to be obscene, but is to those who hear the double entendre and absolutely must not laugh. Here there would be a single utterance, heard in two cultures of interpretation. In this sense we are involved with different cultures in different parts of our lives, when we deal with different groups of people. We are routinely accustomed to behaving in different ways in different settings, without particularly thinking about it. When the circumstances are familiar, we know how we expect ourselves to behave. We treat people we know well differently from strangers. We sit differently on public transport and on the sofa at home. We are comfortable saying some things to our friends, and a different range of things to our parents. We have a sense of decorum for our behaviour, and sense much the same with buildings. Some buildings seem to do the right thing, and we are comfortable with them, even if we don’t pay them much attention. Others might seem awkward or wrong. For example there would be something wrong if a private house looked like a high street shop, and seemed to be trying to encourage people to come across the threshold to explore. The problem wouldn’t just be the practical one, that people kept walking into the house, because that could be solved by keeping the door locked. The architectural problem is at a cultural level: the building would be making the wrong sort of gesture for a house.

One of the things that complicates architecture is that it can be significant to us in a variety of different ways. For example, the building I live in, which I think of as my home, carries a special feeling for me that it does not carry for people who don’t live in it. I understand that and don’t expect them to feel the same way as I do about my home, though I might expect them to feel about their home the way I do about mine (and sometimes I would be wrong, because in fact not everyone does feel the same). Other buildings seem especially beautiful, or spectacular in some way. If I am impressed with them, then I might expect that others will be similarly impressed (again, I might be wrong in individual instances, but I would feel that it was worth asking). And there are other buildings that are famous works of architecture that everybody knows are good. If I don’t feel that a building of this sort is wonderful, then I might feel that I should keep quiet about the fact, because everyone seems to know for a fact that it is excellent, and if I don’t agree then perhaps people will think that my judgement is faulty. These ‘canonic’ works are discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 2 looks at the way in which buildings are made to look like one another, so that they carry the right sorts of messages to those ‘in the know’ in a particular culture. Chapter 1, this chapter, mainly looks at how buildings are involved with our sense of who we are.

Buildings are constructed so as to solve practical problems, but they often do more than that, and when they do then we feel inclined to call them ‘architecture’, because they have a cultural dimension. Of course any building at all can have a cultural dimension if we choose to pay attention to it, but often we feel disinclined to do that. For example, when I fill my car up with fuel, I don’t necessarily think of the petrol station as ‘architecture’, just as a reasonably serviceable place. But I can start to think of it as architecture if I consider that petrol stations are culturally significant buildings, and that their design is worth looking at for what it can teach us about our attitudes to the car and the importance we attach to it.

What architects do is to design buildings with an eye not only to their practical utility, but also with an eye to their cultural value, trying to give them a shape that is in some way appropriate. What it is that makes a building appropriate will be different in different circumstances, depending on what the surrounding buildings are like, what method of construction can be used, and what role a building plays. What seems right in the suburbs might be strange in a city centre. The same shape of building might be simple and direct if it is built in timber, but downright odd if cast in concrete. A building that makes a good swimming pool does not necessarily make a good library — even if it can be made to work, the building’s appearance could feel misleading. The things that follow on from the different sets of decisions feel like forces pulling the building in different directions. If the building’s materials are what most govern the building’s shape then it will go one way, but if the primary concern is to make it the best possible image of its use, then it will go another. All these forces can act independently of one another, at the same time on the same building, so that taking care of one of them might disrupt one of the others. The issue is further complicated by the fact that some ways of doing things have a higher status than others. For example, take something smaller than a building, which is more often bought: furniture.

Furniture belongs in buildings, and can have the kinds of overtones that make it seem like small portable architectural works. Some architects design furniture. The things that we choose to have around us when we furnish our houses and apartments tell us something about the sort of people we are. Everybody knows this. Film-makers and novelists especially make use of the fact by telling us about the places their characters inhabit in order to let us know what kinds of people they are. The bleak interior described as the dwelling place of James Joyce’s character in ‘A Painful Case’ acts as an indication of that character’s habits of mind, which lead him to turn away from affection when — fleetingly — it is offered:

In Fight Club, the nameless protagonist’s total immersion in consumer society is demonstrated by the care with which he furnishes his apartment:

In David Fincher’s film of the novel the point is driven home quickly and effectively by having the nameless character, played by Ed Norton, look round the apartment and, before our eyes, the furniture materializes, a piece at a time, complete with its catalogue description, so we can see that everything in the room has been valued, selected, and paid for. The point to be made here is that the furniture goes beyond being functional, and is described in each of these examples precisely because it does go beyond the functional. A chair in a film is never just a chair, it is an insight into character. Likewise, in a novel if a chair is described, it is always more than a place to sit. Of course the character has chairs in his apartment. If no mention were made of it then we would take it for granted. The character in Fight Club is morbidly self-aware, and asks himself a question that sane people do not ask themselves, but which advertisers and novelists ask of others all the time: ‘What kind of dining set defines me as a person?’ The question is not absurd, but it is not usually asked in this way of oneself. It sounds neurotic, certainly, but it isn’t nonsensical. The sort of dining set that defines a president or an emperor is different from the mass-produced dining set that defines an insurance clerk as a person. But the questions that the insurance clerk would ask would normally tend to be either more practical or more vague: ‘Will it fit in my apartment? Would I be happy to have this furniture around? Does it feel right?’ If I am an emperor then the question is less concerned with a personal taste, and is more like: ‘how do I demonstrate through my furniture that I’m no insurance clerk?’ And the answer is: by having a table that is more extravagant than an insurance clerk could think of having. It may not work any better as a table, but in addition to working as a table it will impress and intimidate. One can imagine the chairman of a multinational company aspiring to own a table that had once belonged to Napoleon, and being prepared to spend a large sum of money on it if it became available. And one can imagine him thinking it money well spent.

Extravagance is not the only way to find gestural qualities in things, and enhance their status. An ascetic philosopher would aim for a table that was pointedly less extravagant than the norm, and its purpose would be to show high-mindedness rather than low status as such. A democratic president would need to show on different occasions both imperial grandeur (when entertaining visiting heads of state) and absolute ordinariness (showing a rapport with voters). We might feel ashamed if our head of state lived in an apartment with inexpensive catalogue furniture, but in another mood might resent the extravagant costs involved in furnishing high-status accommodation from the public purse. The architectural setting has a part to play in putting in place a sense of how it would be appropriate to behave, and in indicating the status and aspirations of its inhabitant. It can be simply a personal matter, if we don’t care what anyone thinks, and decorate to suit ourselves, or can be very public theatre, broadcast around the whole world.

The meaning in buildings is not fixed in them. For example, the cottages that were built by agricultural workers for their own use were not considered as a form of artistic expression, but as serviceable shelters (Figure 2). However the romantic poets saw the simple cottages of the rural poor as an expression of tenacious virtue in bleak circumstances, which meant that they were seen as gestural, and then by the end of the 18th century there was a fashion for small-scale rural retreats (cottages ornées), which certainly should be seen as artistically expressive, and were designed that way. There has been a long tradition of looking at agricultural workers as virtuous and romantic that started somewhere in the ancient world. It was already a tradition when Virgil wrote his Eclogues in the first century BC. Already then there was a sentimental interpretation of agriculture that could develop because there was a class in that society that did not have an everyday involvement in agriculture, but who could see it from a distance and think of it as enviable, or innocent. The most famous architectural expression of this sensibility in the ‘modern’ world is the hamlet that Marie-Antoinette commissioned at Versailles, where she could step aside from her duties as the queen in the world’s most splendid court, and pretend to be a simple milkmaid, in touch with nature and her feelings. The gesture is a blend of innocence, naïveté and sauciness. Another example is Blaise Hamlet near Bristol, that was designed by the architect John Nash as a self-consciously pretty and well-managed group of houses for retired employees of the Blaise estate, a genuine but highly visible gesture of benevolence on the part of the landowner. This has particular poignancy because Nash was also responsible for one of the most extravagant princely dwellings of this or any other time: the Royal Pavilion at Brighton (Figure 3). Even in small illustrations, there is no doubt about the relative status of the inhabitants of the dwellings shown in Figures 2 and 3. Without any specialized knowledge of architecture, we know how to read the signs. Even if we thought that the building in Brighton was relatively normal, it would be clear that it was not the low-cost option, and in fact it was stylistically outlandish and novel. It was not only extravagant, it also relished the display of that extravagance, and still today sweeps visitors along with the sheer exuberance of its display. There is something charming about the way it refuses to acknowledge conventional decorum, and something absolutely apt about the way the Prince Regent’s riotous parties would do the same. There is a surprisingly close relation between the form of the building and its function.

_{2. Traditional cottage, uncertain date, but pre-20th century; no architect. This hovel is a representative example of the types of dwelling that were built by the rural poor until the 19th century. Living conditions could be bad, but the worst cottages were made of earth and have long since disappeared. Stone dwellings, such as the one shown here, would have been built with stone that was either quarried locally or that had been cleared from the fields. This example would have been too small to adapt to modern needs, but many similar slightly larger buildings are still occupied, connected to electricity and with modern plumbing, which makes them very different from the places they once were. In Britain, most cottages are now inhabited by people whose income does not come from farming the plot of land on which the house sits, but by people who either have jobs in towns, or who have retired from their town work. Most cottages therefore function as part of a city, even though they can still look idyllically rural.}

_{3. Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England (1815–21); architect: John Nash (1752–1835). This is one of the most self-consciously exotic buildings that has ever been built. The ‘pavilion’ at Brighton began with a much smaller and more conventional building for the then Prince of Wales (who was later Prince Regent and then George IV). The name ‘pavilion’ derives an old French word for a tent and is now normally used for small buildings that connect with outdoor activity, and it would have fitted the original building reasonably well, but the sprawling palace that developed on the site is not really a pavilion (though some of the roofs have tent-like forms). John Nash also designed the original Regent Street in London, and Buckingham Palace (but not its familiar public façade). The Pavilion was composed of architectural motifs taken from the far reaches of empire, with Indian domes and verandahs on the outside, and a sumptuous western idea of Chinese decoration on the inside.}

Extravagance is also the main reason to be impressed by the great pyramids of ancient Egypt. Vast resources went into making them, and from that we infer how powerful were the rulers who commissioned them. There are reasons to be impressed by the ingenuity of the pyramid builders, and their know-how, but the pyramids would be insignificant monuments, known only to specialists, if they were not big (Figure 4). We are not overly impressed by things that we think we could do ourselves, and the reason that the pyramids were one of the wonders of the world is that they could not easily be imitated, on account of the sheer expense of the undertaking. If the production of the state only just covered the people’s need to subsist, then it would not have been possible to build on such a scale. And if the wealth had been evenly distributed through the society, then no such monument could have been built. A high proportion of the state’s wealth must have been directed into these building programmes, and such a unity of will suggests a political structure that put a great deal of power at the disposal of an individual. The pyramids were given over to survival and prosperity in the afterlife, and so could be seen as a whole society’s investment in the future. The Brighton Pavilion was given over to pleasure. What links the two buildings is that they are far from ordinary, and have little connection with the daily lives of the ordinary people in either society. Neither of them ever helped directly with the activities that make it possible to live, such as the production of food or the manufacture of useful goods. Those activities must have been going on somewhere in each society, but they are not housed in these buildings, which consumed vast resources. They impress because they bear the mark of that consumption — of materials carefully worked, to make effects that were carefully considered.

‘Architecture’ has often been taken to be impressive buildings such as these. In that way of thinking, buildings that impress us are to be called ‘architecture’, while those that don’t impress remain as mere ‘buildings’. In fact we might not need to call them anything at all, because they probably just fall out of the picture. I want to argue that ‘architecture’ is not the same thing as ‘good buildings’ but is the cultural aspect of any building at all, good or bad. The putting together of materials belongs to the realm of building, but the building’s gestures — the extravagance, exoticism, and exuberance — belong to the realm of architecture, as would simplicity and ruggedness, if those were the building’s particular qualities. The point is best explained by thinking about ‘vernacular architecture’, which is the term used to refer to the ordinary buildings put up by ordinary people, traditionally agricultural workers building for themselves or their neighbours. If we were to look at these buildings through the eyes of an 18th-century landowner, then we would see them as ‘hovels’, places to live that had few comforts — though for the people who lived in them they would have had all the complicated connotations of ‘home’. When we as tourists in the Lake District see them they are ‘vernacular architecture’ and a charming part of the scenery, protected by legislation. Even when the actual fabric of the building has not changed much, there has been a change in sensibility, which can be traced back to the influence of the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth. The point to be made is that ‘architecture’ did not seem to be anything to do with these buildings when they were built, but it does seem to be there now. The stones have not moved. It is the culture that has shifted. Architecture is not an attribute of a building in itself, but of a building that is experienced in a culture — and we all bring some culture or other to bear on a building when we experience it. This is not to say that all buildings are equally good, or important, only to say that every building has its cultural aspect, and if we choose to notice it then we are looking at that building as architecture. Without some cultural intuitions we would not be able to sense any significant difference between the peasants eating round the fire in a little cottage, and the nobility and revellers eating in the dining room of the Brighton Pavilion — more food, more noise, more people. The peasants may not have taken a self-conscious decision about what kind of dining set defined them as people, but nevertheless the way they dined, or rather supped, speaks volumes about them and their way of life. The architecture is caught up in a way of life, and we make inferences about the life from interpreting the architecture. Conversely we either deliberately choose to live in surroundings that reflect our ideas about who we are, or else find ourselves living in conditions that somehow reveal more about us than we realize.

_{4. Great Pyramid of Khufu, Giza, near Cairo, Egypt (2723–2563 BC); architect: unknown. The Egyptian pyramids astonished the ancient world, and in the modern world have been a byword for mystery. They were built in the north of Egypt as burial places for the pharaohs — the god-kings who ruled in ancient times. The one illustrated here was the largest of them, built for the burial of Khufu, who is also known by the Greeks’ name for him: Cheops. All the large pyramids date from the Old Kingdom of Egypt, after which the country was ruled from Thebes, 500 miles further south, and the burials were in cave tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The Great Pyramid is huge, and consumed vast amounts of effort from the society that built it — without the help of such advanced technology as iron tools or pulleys of any kind. Everyday buildings were built in mud-brick and timber, and they do not survive, but the pyramids were designed to last forever.}

One of the things that makes our surroundings feel right is familiarity. We grow accustomed to our surroundings and shape our habits around them, so that even if the surroundings interfere with what we’re trying to do, we are accustomed to dealing with the problems. Buildings which are part of the daily scene come to have significance simply by being there. It is possible for a building with no artistic accomplishment to become meaningful and significant for large numbers of people, simply by having been there all their lives. In the same way that I feel at home in my house, I feel a bond of recognition when I see a familiar landmark, and some buildings have been designed with that role in mind. For example the very prominent city hall in Philadelphia has this role for the inhabitants of the city. Artistically it is quite an odd building, and it has not been widely imitated by architects in other parts of the world. Its principal significance is local, but locally it is very significant indeed. For many years it was the tallest building in the city — a statue of the city’s founder, William Penn, stands at the top of its tower, and it was seen as symbolically appropriate that he should not be overtopped. The city centre’s streets are planned on a grid, which is broken by the city hall, so it is the one building in the centre that stops vistas, and it is visible from a long way off. The oddity of the design makes it unique and identifiable with this single point on the surface of the earth. It is not a generic interchangeable building that could be anywhere and just happens to be here, but is a symbolic anchor-point around which the city grew. The city hall therefore acts as a symbol of the status of the city and the state of Pennsylvania.

At national level something similar happens, but at a larger scale. The buildings that represent the nation to itself are grander again, and more generally recognized, because they also have a role in representing the nation to the rest of the world. In Washington DC, the Capitol building, the White House and the monuments along the Mall have become the buildings that have this symbolic role, and they have a duty to reflect the status of the nation on the international stage. In the UK the equivalent monuments are the Houses of Parliament (the Palace of Westminster), Buckingham Palace, and the ministries along Whitehall, running up into Trafalgar Square. In Paris there is a significant difference, because the monuments that have the greatest symbolic prominence are not seats of government, but of culture. The Champs Elysées from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower have come to represent the identity of the French nation overseas more evocatively than the National Assembly and the president’s palace. Where the capital city did not already provide the necessary accretion of monuments, some nations have erected a purpose-designed national monument, such as in Budapest, where an architectural composition supports a weight of symbolism from various sources — Christian, pagan neoclassical, and historical — to show that the Hungarians are descended from wild horsemen, but are now part of the civilized colloquy of nations. The various states in Italy did not unify into an Italian nation until the 19th century, and the vast Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome was designed to commemorate the event, and remind all Italians of their new collective identity, drawing on the Roman imperial past. These monuments are in the capital cities of various nations, but their role is to act as a symbol for people who live beyond the city.

A building such as the Palace of Westminster has a double role to play. It must work reasonably well as a building in which to do parliamentary business, and it must also appropriately symbolize the collective identity of the nation’s policy-makers. We are routinely familiar with the symbolic role, and have no difficulty in recognizing the building as one of the ‘sights’ of London (Figure 5) but are less familiar with its internal organization, which is complex but highly rational — if seen with reference to the activities that were anticipated when it was built. Much has changed since then, and the building has not helped that change, but it was planned round a central axis, with the House of Lords on one side, the House of Commons on the other, and an imposing vaulted lobby in between. A tremendously long corridor runs along the line of the river frontage, leading to a sequence of committee rooms. The rooms were all daylit, and naturally ventilated, because when they were built there was no viable alternative, and in order to make that possible there are courtyards and lightwells. The rationality of the planning affects how well the building works as the parliamentarians go about their business, but has nothing to do with the building’s symbolism, which evokes the medieval past, as a way of demonstrating continuity with that past. This was not intended to be seen as a ‘revolutionary’ building. The building replaced an earlier parliament building, which had been medieval, but there were more reasons than inertia for rebuilding in a medieval style. The Gothic style developed in the Christian cathedrals of northern Europe, so it was seen as more indigenous than the most obvious alternative, which would have been some form of classicism, which has its roots in pagan Greece, and was first imported to Britain by Roman invaders. The architecture here was intended to help along an idea of British identity that was deeply rooted in the place, and rather pious, and because we still recognize many of the architectural gestures, the symbolism still seems to work, even though there have been many social and cultural changes since the building was constructed.

It is not inevitable that a building with a national role would have to appeal to the country’s sense of its ancient identity. When Scotland needed a new building to house its national assembly, it chose Enric Miralles, an avant-gardist architect from Barcelona. The choice was calculated to show that Scotland is not provincial, but has a presence on the world stage, and that it is forward-looking. There was a similar concern to position the Punjab in the modern world when Le Corbusier was given his largest commission, to design a capital city, Chandigarh (Figure 6). In this respect the commission was a great international success. By this time in his career, Le Corbusier had had a tremendous influence on how people thought about how to make cities work. His most famous image of urban design was a model that showed Paris with its boulevards flattened, making room for a grid of enormous residential tower blocks. Needless to say, the idea was not acted on. The ideas had more immediate impact in Latin America, where there were rapidly growing cities and centralized power structures that could see them implemented, but they were designed by others, not the originator of the thinking. Chandigarh was the only city designed by Le Corbusier that was actually built, so it was much anticipated around the world. It presented the architect with particular challenges, in finding ways to make an impression on the sophisticated international architecture scene, while having at his disposal only the materials and craftsmanship to be found locally, and which make it in its way profoundly rooted to the place.

_{5. Palace of Westminster, London, England (1836–68); architect: Sir Charles Barry (1795–1860) with A. W. N. Pugin (1812–52). The old Palace of Westminster, where the British parliament met, was burnt down in 1834. It was replaced by the present building, the organization of which was worked out by Sir Charles Barry, while Augustus Pugin designed the medieval-style decoration, not only of the outside of the building, but also of the furniture and the wallpaper. Views of the outside are very familiar: the romantic silhouette and walls covered in panels of intricate but mechanically repetitive carving. The design was chosen in competition, and it stipulated that the design had to be medieval in character — taking inspiration from the surviving parts of the old palace, such as Westminster Hall. Barry enlisted Pugin’s help because Pugin was passionate about medieval architecture, which he described as an indigenous Christian architecture, in contrast with the pagan origins of classicism.}

_{6. Chandigarh, Punjab, India (1950–65); architect: Le Corbusier (1887–1965). Le Corbusier drew up a masterplan for the new administrative capital, and designed its principal administrative buildings: the Secretariat, the High Court, and the Assembly. There were particular climatic problems to be addressed, and the architecture is dominated by shading devices, such as an umbrella-like roof over the top of the whole of the High Court building. Surrounding the buildings as far as possible with shade, it was also necessary to promote the circulation of air. A river was dammed in order to make a lake that helped to modify the local climate. The buildings are composed of Le Corbusier’s usual interplay between grid-like forms, and freely sculptural elements, made out of concrete by a local workforce.}

It does not always happen that the symbolism designed into a building is the symbolism that is understood by the observer who sees the building in the modern age, and the more distant the culture the more likely it is. For example, the pyramids have been seen as a symbol of ancient mystery, not because that was any part of the intention of their designers, but because they were so remote from modern rationalism, and so little understood. Voltaire poured scorn on the ancient Egyptians’ reverence for cats and onions. The air of mystery was deliberately exploited when pyramids were evoked in Western culture, and the ‘Egyptian’ rites in freemasonry were devised in the 18th century. One major advance in our appreciation of ancient Egypt was made in the 19th century when hieroglyphics, ancient Egyptian writing, were deciphered for the first time. The archaeological study of Egypt has advanced enormously, and some aspects of the society are now understood quite clearly. In a society that lasted for hundreds of years at a stretch without noticeable cultural change, the habits of the culture (however bizarre they might seem to us) would surely have been experienced as the most obvious sort of common sense by the people who lived then. Of course priests dress up in costumes to look like the gods: that’s what priests do. Obviously some sacred ceremonies are performed at dead of night — that’s the proper time for them. But in our own day the popular imagination continues to develop the old idea of supernatural powers, curses, and occult knowledge, often linking it with futuristic technical wizardry. The basic ‘argument’ is that, since the achievements of the ancient Egyptians were so impressive, they must have had help from advanced technologies, like laser beams, or visiting spacecraft, and from there it is a small step to think that they might have discovered how to bring the dead back to life. This imaginative tradition is sold as fact in some of the literature (which outsells academic studies by a factor of tens or hundreds of thousands) and in an overtly fictional way is to be found in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy, Stargate, and The Fifth Element. The imagery is evidently effective in its appeal to modern audiences, and the fact that the ancient Egyptians would not recognize themselves or any of their ideas in the stories is not an issue. At least, it isn’t an issue unless we have misinformed ourselves to the point that we think that we’re watching these films in order to find out about ancient Egypt. And that would be a straightforward but terrible error. The films tell us about the daydreams of the present day, not about the ancient past. The buildings of the pharaohs were certainly intended to have meaning. It is evident from the care and precision with which they were worked. They are not the products of neglect and chance. But equally we can be sure that the original meaning is lost to us today, and attempts to reconstruct it can only be conjecture and will never have the force of immediate intuition. The original architects might have felt that they were building things that had definite meaning embodied in them, but with the passage of time and the perishing of civilizations, it becomes clear that the meaning is volatile, and dependent not just on the stones, but also on the culture in which the interpretation is made.

The buildings that are most consistently associated with virtue and high-mindedness in the Western tradition are the buildings of ancient Greece, especially the Parthenon in Athens, which has always been seen as a high point of artistic accomplishment (Figure 7). One of the things that marks out Athens culturally is that a great many ideas were developed there that are with us still — ideas such as democracy, and philosophy. The monuments that were built at the time of the golden age of Athens, in the 5th century BC, are associated with the foundations of Western society, and because of that association have unmatched authority. This was the case even during periods of time when the actual form of the buildings was not widely known, such as in the 18th century, when the ancient sanctuary was used for military purposes by the Turks — and casual visitors have never been welcomed into military bases. Also by then the form of the ancient buildings was not altogether clear, because there had been an accumulation of various additions — towers and fortifications. Back in ancient times, classical architecture had been adopted by the Romans, and their versions of it spread throughout their vast empire — across Europe, and into Africa and the Middle East. There have been many versions of this ‘classical’ architecture over the centuries, and it has been understood in different ways, so we find it adopted for its democratic and philosophical overtones by Thomas Jefferson when he laid out the university campus at Virginia, inspired by the ideals that launched the constitution of the newly independent USA, while Albert Speer played up its capacity for imperial pomp in his designs for Hitler’s Berlin. There was a vogue for specifically Greek classicism among Irish Catholics in the earlier 19th century, because they felt kinship not with the ancient but with the modern Greeks in their struggle for independence.

_{7. The Parthenon, Athens, Greece (447–436 BC); architects: Ictinus and Callicrates working with the sculptor Phidias. The Parthenon was the largest of the Greek temples from the 5th century BC, the ‘classical’ age of Greece. It was extravagant, on account of decorations and refinements that are not apparent in a general photograph. Phidias, the greatest sculptor of the age was employed here, certainly to make the cult figure of the goddess Athena, and perhaps to supervise the building works. There were fine sculpted decorations showing Greeks wrestling with centaurs and Amazons in the square panels visible above the columns that run right round the building. Uniquely there was also a frieze in low relief on the wall of the temple, depicting a great procession. The building is of solid marble, which can be worked very precisely, and the use of optical refinement is more evident here than anywhere else. All the architectural lines that look straight are in fact very slightly curved.}

The use of classical columns and decorative detail has been so regularly revived in the history of Western architecture that they more or less define what Western architecture is, or was seen to be, until relatively recently. Even the main alternative tradition — the medieval architecture that we now call Gothic — grew out of an attempt to rival the Romans’ achievements in their monuments. The vaulted churches of northern Europe that were built from the 10th to the 12th century are called ‘Romanesque’, and they were inspired by the ruins of Roman gates and temples that lingered for example in Burgundy, where we find the first medieval vaulted church at Tournus. The meaning of medieval buildings has undergone the most extraordinary shift over the years. The most spectacular monuments of the Middle Ages are the great French cathedrals, such as Bourges, which were made so as to appear as if they were constructed out of little more than coloured light (Figure 8). Complex and ingenious arrangements of stone made all this possible, cut to shape with astonishing precision, and put into place by groups of skilled craftsmen who would travel round from one major cathedral to another, learning from their experience and improving on past performances. While the various elements of the Gothic style were around in Romanesque churches, it is usually seen to have crystallized in a new vision in the fabulously wealthy church of Saint-Denis near Paris, from about 1137, when the Abbot Suger began a programme of rebuilding. He described his rapture, surrounded by the church’s gem-encrusted treasures and coloured light: ‘I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven.’ Through the 13th to 15th centuries there were also pale imitations of the work in the smaller churches and more modest buildings.

The name ‘Gothic’ was first given to this architecture in the 17th century, as a term of abuse. The Goths, along with the Vandals and Huns, were the Germanic tribes who sacked Rome and laid waste to the western Roman empire in the 5th century. To call the architecture ‘Gothic’ is like calling it ‘barbaric’ — saying that it is a form of cultural vandalism. Needless to say, in this cultural climate the architecture was not approached with sympathy, and it was not closely analysed, but all non-classical styles of building were bundled together and thought of as a confused jumble of incoherence and bad taste. This sense of the Gothic survives when it is used in ‘Gothic horror’. Indeed the whole idea of the Middle Ages is caught up in this way of looking at things. It was supposed to have been a time between ancient and modern civilization (see page 6). Medieval architecture was studied first of all by antiquaries, who began to realize that there were various different styles of architecture here, and that they had been built at different times. The Gothic was then used in the 19th century by architects such as Pugin, who did the detailed work for the Palace of Westminster, but he preferred to call the style ‘pointed or Christian’ rather than Gothic, in an attempt to clear it of its unfavourable associations. For him, and architects like him, it came to represent a way of designing that was highly principled, and went well beyond being a pleasant decorative style, to being a moral and religious way of doing the right thing in architecture. For him Gothic architecture was not only the best, it was the only legitimate sort of architecture for a principled designer with Christian morals.

_{8. Cathedral of St Etienne, Bourges, France (begun 1190). Of all the medieval cathedrals, this is the one that best illustrates the idea of a building as a cage of light. The west end of the building is immensely solid, with five unequal doorways surrounded by hundreds of small sculpted figures. Above there are two unequal towers. The rest of the building however gives an impression of being precisely repetitive, as a standard type of bay is taken along the whole length of the building without interruption, and adapted with a minimum of difference so as to make it turn the semi-circular end at the west. The nave is immensely high, at 39 m (125 feet), and it is flanked by double aisles. The building is filled with light that filters through stained glass, painted with images of biblical stories. From the outside the buttressing that holds the building up is clearly visible, looking like a series of powerful props: they shore up the illusion of weightless delicacy within.}

One might want to ask, ‘what is the real meaning of Gothic?’ but the question doesn’t allow a single answer that will satisfy everyone. If I react in a certain way to a building when I encounter it, then so far as I am concerned my reaction is genuine, and the way I react will depend on my previous experience. If it is the first time I have entered a Gothic cathedral, say, then I might be puzzled or impressed, seeing it as a place of wonder and mystery. If I have been in many other similar cathedrals then it might feel quite familiar, and I could find it steady and reassuring. I do not necessarily know what the designer intended me to feel. That does not mean that the experience must be without meaning for me. It is worth labouring the point, because architects tend to think of the matter differently. If an architect thinks of the design of buildings as a creative activity, then it is most likely that it would seem most important to work with sincerity and conviction, and less important to act with a view to second-guessing the reaction of an audience. Indeed, working with an eye on the crowd’s response might seem to indicate a lack of authenticity. Buildings designed by this sort of architect will be the way they are because that is how the architect feels they must be, and any compromise with the views of others will be a weakening and worsening of the design. It tends to be the case that this is the sort of architect admired by other architects. To people who do not share the vision, the view may look arrogant and inflexible, but to people who do share it the architect will seem inspired. Conversely, an architect who is sensitive to the audience’s response might take fewer risks, might tend to take a conservative view of cultural change, and might be seen as a reliable performer by the people who commission buildings, but such a designer will accrue no artistic kudos. Architects of this type greatly outnumber the others, but we do not hear about them in books about architecture, because, despite providing what society on the whole wants of them, they are seen by other architects at best as honest and competent but not particularly notable, or as slick commercial operators. Unqualified admiration is reserved for those who seem to manage to make their own ideas into buildings, and to bend the will of others to their own in order to make it happen. Indeed, this is no mean feat, because the will of the person paying for the building is usually the one that has most power, and so one of the great practical skills that architects need to have is the power to persuade.

Buildings, as I have said, are often very expensive. The person or committee that commissions a building will always want to be assured that its money is being spent wisely, in order to bring about what is intended. If a school commissions a swimming pool then it will be disappointed, and will undoubtedly sue, if the building that results from the commission cannot in fact be used as for swimming. If a plutocrat commissions a frivolous eye-catcher for a hill in his garden, then the architect will have failed if the building is solemnly monumental. How does the architect persuade the client that the design fits the bill? Usually by explaining what it is going to be like, by using illustrations or models, so that the building can be imagined in its setting. At this stage the design can be modified without great expenditure. The main alternative is to build the design, and modify the building if needs be, but to do this is for most of us ruinously extravagant. It is what Ludwig II of Bavaria did at his small and highly ornamental palace, Linderhof, in the foothills of the Alps, but his name has never been a byword for prudence, and his accountants eventually had him certified as insane. Often a building cannot be the way we would like it to be, perhaps because our neighbours will not allow it, or perhaps for some more fundamental reason, such as the limited strength of materials or the intransigent way in which gravity lets us down. In persuading the client that the building is as closely suitable for its purpose as can reasonably be expected, the architect has three main techniques of persuasion.

The first is reasoned argument. A design cannot develop solely by way of reasoning — there is always at some point a creative leap in the process, except perhaps in a very traditional society when we might decide that now is the moment to have a house like every other house we know. Even then, the appeal isn’t really to reasoning as to the repetition of experience. Reasoning, in the strict sense of moving from agreed premises to necessary conclusions, is never the only way of thinking involved in finding a design, but it is necessary if one is to assess the merits of a given design. It should be possible to frame an argument that shows why a design is good, and this will amount to a demonstration that the design will do what it is supposed to do. In buildings where technical matters predominate, this might well be the main form of persuasion used in winning approval for the design. However buildings are often complex, and have many factors working on them that interfere with one another. For example if I make some windows larger in order to let in more light or open up a view, then the building might let out more heat, and it could be necessary to install a more powerful heater. This actually happened at the house that Gerrit Rietveld designed for Mrs Schröder in Utrecht (Figure 9). The central heating system here was normally used for heating industrial space. It cost as much as a typical Utrecht house of the day, and made the cost of the whole house about twice that of an ordinary house of its size. The decision to install the heater must have been the result of reasoning, because it has no other obvious appeal. Given the novel form of the house, its unusual degree of openness to the outside, and the consequent loss of heat, the decision to install the heater was undoubtedly rational. However it is equally clear that the overall form of the building was not devised by way of reason alone — otherwise one might have decided on smaller windows and have had a house that was less costly both to build and to run.

_{9. Schröder house, Utrecht, Netherlands (1924); architect: Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964). This small house was on the edge of Utrecht when it was built, on the end of a terrace of more conventional houses, looking out across the absolutely flat surrounding countryside. It was built for Mrs Schröder, a widow with children, who commissioned Rietveld, a furniture designer, to make a design that suited her ideas about how to live. On the upper floor an arrangement of folding and sliding screen walls made it possible to have a large open space, or to screen areas off to give individuals visual privacy — the screens did not allow much acoustic privacy. Rietveld was involved with the De Stijl group of artists, and the design of the house connects with their ideas about form, rather than with any traditional ideas about architecture or building. The appearance of the house was always extraordinary and novel, but its means of construction were fairly traditional, the walls being built of brickwork, rendered and painted.}

The house has had tremendous influence in the decades since it was built, and among architects it is one of the best remembered buildings of the 1920s, despite its small size and inconspicuous location — outside the town centre of a provincial town in a small country. If it had been known that it would keep the Schröder name imperishably in the public eye, then that might have been a reason for building a house in this way, but of course the house’s reputation could not be predicted in advance, and this form of argument could not have been rationally allowed at the time that Mrs Schröder took the decision to build. What is more likely to have persuaded her of the rightness of the design was the force of Rietveld’s personal conviction. The client had strong convictions of her own, about the way that life should be lived. Every bedroom could work as a small living room, and all the rooms could be thrown together into one big space by folding away the walls, which were just thin screens.

When the rooms were enclosed, each one had a door to the outside, and a wash basin in it. This was not just an ordinary house that the designer managed to make artistically adventurous — it was designed to accommodate a fresh way of living. Nevertheless, the reason that the house looked the way it did was because of Rietveld’s involvement with the De Stijl group of artists (which included the painter Mondrian in its number) and he came to the project with experience in furniture design, following the principles of using lines and planes at right angles to one another, and primary colours. These might seem like odd principles to have adopted, but he did adopt them. His reasons for doing so need not detain us here, but involved a belief that by these means one could directly influence the state of the soul. It is quite possible that Mrs Schröder shared these convictions too, in which case she would have been persuaded by reason. If however she did not accept Rietveld’s premises but was impressed by his seriousness of purpose and believed that he would achieve something worthwhile, then she would have been persuaded in a way that is used more often than it is acknowledged. In effect this is the same as convincing someone of one’s authority to deal with the matter in hand, and it takes the general form of saying ‘trust me, I am able to judge this better than you are’.

The third form of persuasion is different again, because it does not claim authority, but rather charms the client into suspending criticism. This might be because the design is very appealing, or it might be because the architect is very appealing. It is not unknown for architects literally to seduce their clients, or their clients’ wives. Frank Lloyd Wright eloped with the wife of one of his clients, and consequently had to abandon not only his family, but also his successful architectural practice. He was not the only one. Indeed Rietveld grew very close to Mrs Schröder, and set up a studio in the built-in garage of her house, and displayed his furniture designs there. The charmer in effect says ‘indulge me, this is what I want, and you will love it because it is my work’. The power of both authority and charm come from either instructing or more gently persuading someone to stop reasoning, and accept advice. Individuals are more susceptible than are committees, and buildings commissioned by committees are correspondingly less idiosyncratic, more reasonable. A housing committee would never have commissioned the Schröder house. A committee formed to promote the ideals of De Stijl might have done.

This little house neatly illustrates a variety of ways in which a building can have meaning. For the children who grew up in it, extraordinary though it may have been, it was home, and would have been a comforting and reassuring place to return to after a day at school. For the widow Schröder it was a basis for a fresh start and a new way of life after the death of her still young husband. For Rietveld it was an opportunity to put into practice on an unprecedented scale the ideas that he had been working on with his artist friends, and he did what it was necessary to do. For the neighbours the building must have seemed odd and unaccountable, and would have made no sense at all at first, but it gradually became familiar to them as a landmark at the edge of the town, looking out (as it did then) over flat open fields. In the 21st century the house looks ‘ahead of its time’, whatever that might mean, and if we were to think that we could guess at its date by looking at its style, then we would certainly guess some time after 1924, and might admire it for its apparent prescience. On the other hand we might look at its level of consumption of fuel and feel the need to condemn it on environmental grounds. There is one small building here, but many different ways to respond to it, so different sets of feelings are generated by it. Since architecture is what happens when we encounter a building and bring a culture to bear on it, we could say that this one building belongs to, or produces, a number of architectures. It makes a gesture in more than one cultural context. If we look at it as a work of architecture of the home, then it is a gesture of freedom and emancipation for its inhabitants, in which they can invent their lives, liberated from the conventional constraints of a bourgeois family. If we look at it as an element in the architecture of the city of Utrecht then we can see it as a gesture of attention-seeking, which was welcome here at the edge of town, acting rather like the sort of marker that a city gate-post might once have been. If we look at it as part of the development of modernist architecture, then it is a gesture of great importance, marking one of the crucial moments when the artistry of the building was evident, despite the fact that the form of the building did not derive from earlier buildings, but from more abstract ideas. Which of these is the real meaning? They are all real meanings, and not one of them can be attributed directly to the architect. If we were to want to know about what it meant to him, then we would need to immerse ourselves in the literature of theosophy, and learn about Madame Blavatsky’s descriptions of the spirit world. These days not many of us are inclined to do so, but even if we did retrieve Rietveld’s original understanding of the building, that would not invalidate the other readings, or make them meaningless.

As society becomes more pluralistic and multicultural, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand in advance what a building will mean to the people who will be using it. If an architect and the building’s users are from the same social group, then it is more likely that the gestures will be understood in the way that they were intended. However any public building will be used by people with a multiplicity of different backgrounds, who respond to things in different ways. This is not a problem, so long as the responses fall within a reasonable range, but if for example a modern public official were to erect a house that looked and worked like the Brighton Pavilion, whether the money came from the public purse or whether it was borrowed (as it was when the then Prince of Wales built it) then there would now certainly be a public outcry. It is difficult to know what would be made of the oriental styling in a postcolonial context. It could either be seen as a tribute to an important ethnic minority’s culture, or as nostalgia for lost empire, but either way it would have powerful overtones now that were not present when it was built. Then it had some overtones that would be indefensible now, but they were acceptable to the people who came into contact with the building in its day. If it were built today, then there would be riots and resignations. Queen Victoria hated the building and all it represented to her. This was not principally on account of the style, but on account of the life that the building was designed to make possible — a life of extravagance and debauchery, which stood at odds with the image of the monarchy that she was determined to project. It was under Victoria that the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt, as an image of rectitude and piety, suited to the kind of government she would have hoped to see. When the Lord Chancellor’s suite there was recently refurbished the price seemed to the popular press to be profligate, but if we make adjustments for changes in the value of money, it would have cost no more than it did originally. From the outset the building’s duty was to be magnificent, not cheap. That was what was seen as appropriate to its role.

Now, more than in the past, it is necessary for public buildings to justify themselves to the public at large. We still accept that the meaning and value that is perceived by an educated elite has some value, but as the idea of democracy takes hold ever more firmly, it is seen as necessary for the popular audience to have its say. This was shown with great clarity at the award of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize for 2000 and 2001 (and the practice may well continue) when the prize-winning building was chosen by a panel of experts. The awards were shown on television — a quintessentially populist medium — and the television company organized a poll of its viewers to select their favourite building from those shortlisted. What happened was that the popular verdict was announced, shortly followed by the declaration of the ‘real’ award, decided by expert opinion (which went to an altogether different building). We do not live in a unified culture, and we do not have a single way of determining what we, society as a whole, think is good. It is unusual to compare the results of two competing methods of evaluation in a public forum, as one of them tends to undermine the apparent validity of the other. In matters of taste we are less likely than we were a generation ago to bow to expert opinion, which is certainly a good thing by democratic standards, but it is not necessarily good for the art because it can involve a coarsening of judgement, and can be the means of sanctioning philistinism. I know that I would not want to say that the most popular thing was always the best one, but in our society the popular also has power, because it tends to have market forces on its side, and from time to time the rare and extraordinary does find popular acclaim. Then the object in question, whether it is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, or Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water (Figure 10) is not only a delight in itself, it also confers status on its owner, and therefore if it comes on to the market, its price is high compared with the cost of making it.

_{10. Falling Water, Bear Run, Pennsylvania (1936–9); architect: Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959). It must have taken a great leap of faith to be persuaded that this house could be viable — hovering with breathtaking audacity over a waterfall in the depths of a forest — but even the wealthy businessman who commissioned it as a holiday retreat baulked at Wright’s idea of covering the faces of the overhanging balconies in gold leaf. The living rooms feel close to the natural landscape, partly because the sound of the waterfall is inescapable, and partly because rocky outcrops erupt in the main living room. When approached by way of the front door, the house seems to grow out of the landscape, but it is the view from below that is best known. Wright took the reinforced concrete beyond its limits, and the building has sagged and needed substantial restoration work to keep it looking good. It remains a dazzling exploration of the possibilities of what a house can be.}

The precise ways in which we respond to buildings are variable according to our prior experiences of buildings. Depending on our acculturation, we might be impressed or dismayed by different things, but cutting across all considerations of style and taste, we respond also to the kind of life that we suppose to be implied in a building — whether it feels wholesome or dispiriting, sordid or dangerous, whether it opens up new possibilities, or reminds us of places where we have been happy in the past. We respond to these aspects of buildings, which are not intrinsic in the buildings themselves, as well as to the abstract set of shapes that we see.