hen someone wants to construct a building in a city of
a democratic nation, what are the ethical parameters? In cities of the so
called 'developed' countries, building is managed through a collusion of
business and governmental interests expressed through its planning regulations
and civic by-laws. In many cities this pragmatic approach to planning has
resulted in a proliferation of commercial buildings that have instituted
monotonous, dense and unhealthy environments for living and working. It has
also instituted inflated property prices allowing speculators to profiteer
from unnecessarily dense plot ratios and artificial elevation of building
heights. Even in countries such as Canada and Australia where land is
plentiful, financial interests have prevailed over common sense in insisting
on centralising all business activities around pre-defined core districts. It
has turned historical cities such as London and Paris, into habitats that only
the wealthy can afford. If modern law is based on ethical principles, of
encouraging individual actions to result in public good and limiting
individual actions that are deemed harming, then in terms of city
planning, modern law seems at best, inadequate.
If planning regulations deal badly with
issues such as density and massing, on aesthetic matters and on other matters
of social well-being, they are completely inept, irresponsible and
dysfunctional. With the ingenuous and obstinate insistence that aesthetics is
entirely subjective, and therefore 'impossible' to administer, planners aided
by the policy-makers manage to disclaim responsibility for the most
fundamental tasks in city planning; of creating balance, character and
coherence. Some planners suggest that encouraging 'good' design is the
obvious answer: the criteria for judgement being what some call 'educated'
taste which admittedly is a tangible factor as a matter of philosophical
discourse. However, as a matter of regulatory policy, it fails due to
the difficulty in designing legislative narratives that can adequately support
working definitions of words like 'good' and 'educated'.
What is happening in our cities is evidently
harmful but why does so much building activity escape closer public scrutiny?
Why are aesthetic standards so difficult to apply? If cities are by their
nature, explicitly representational of prevailing value systems, the
zeitgeist of being, then in modern cities, three related aspects of
contemporary life are apparent: our complete absorption in pursuits of
individual interests, the accompanying dependence on advertising and the mass
media to characterise individual success; and the use of 'style' as a mark of
uniqueness and individual power.
As we examine with a critical eye, the stock
of designs by 'master' architects for buildings that have been raised in
recent times from New York to Paris to Sydney, it is sufficiently evident that
the modern city has become a laboratory for experiments in style. What is
style? Style in architecture is the set of distinguishing parameters of
the substantive product and the visual effect of the combination of elements
that go to create a piece of building construction. Thus style could be
defined as the aesthetic equivalent to syntax in language. The modern
movement duped the world and swindled us of a good word by claiming a certain
ownership to universal truths intrinsic to its own ways of designing, which
they claimed was devoid of the evils of fashion, ornament and 'style'.
We in our later wisdom have discovered modernism to be just another kind of
'style'. If the early modern movement and the subsequent international style
practiced their art with a desperation to be rigorous and 'right' in their
austere tastes, then the late moderns have rebelled against any kind of
stricture with their insistence on their freedom to build virtually anything
in any form and typography that can carry some kind of abstract conceptual
narrative. With the notable exception of the current critical disapproval of
'borrowed' historical styles and overt ornamentation, in the closing years of
the twentieth century, tastemakers identify 'modern masterpieces' by the
unmistakable stylistic tour de force displayed by celebrated architects
and their lesser known but faithful imitators. Each architect has his
favourite follies and pas de deux. Each has 'vision'. Each is
above all, 'interesting' and everyone is an 'innovator'. The extravagance of
their individual dreams are paid for through the indulgence of their
ostentatious clients, yet the late moderns still find the lack of general
public support discomforting as they continue to maintain illusions about
having a useful social role.
Stop. Let's think about this for a
minute. Who gives out the licenses for these activities? Who said that it was
all right for the public realm to be turned into a hotbed of experimentation
for personal styles of individual architects and their clients? It would be
fair to suggest that the predominant impact of a new building on the public at
large is its appearance, followed by its more intimate effects on the quality
of the lives of its inhabitants. Yet here is a curious legal oversight.
The pertinent regulations are not specific about aesthetic factors nor on
matters of social organisation. In reality, aside from the obligatory density,
safety and health concerns, the success or failure of individual building
projects are almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of its executors.
Does this not place a large question mark over the legitimacy of planning
procedures in many ostensibly democratic societies? Operating in an
aesthetic vacuum underwritten by inadequate planning laws, by what merit then,
do architects and building owners claim the right to impose their private
conceptions on a hapless public?
To be continued... Articles Index : Top
