Think the Todaiji temple in Nara, Japan, think the Antwerp Central station in Belgium, or the Plaza de España in Sevilla, Spain. Think the Great Mosque of Ispahan in Iran. Think the Palace of Versaille in France, or the Feathered Serpent temple in Xochicalco, Mexico. While at very distant ends of the spectrum of human genius, in all its diversity, these structures have in common the fact they sought to transcend human existence through their beauty. Across all cultures, civilisations, and all eras, people have strived to erect buildings that were monumental, yet in which no scale was neglected. Details and skill mattered.
Now contrast this with what post-WWII architecture has been looking like. In a struggle to stand out, to be “different”, “honest”, or “playful”, there was a wilful and coordinated effort from architects to expugnate aesthetics from their trade. Looking at the Torre Velasca in Milan, the Johannes XXIII Church in Cologne, or the downright insulting Inntel Amsterdam in the Netherlands, we can agree they have been successful. As if the piles of rubble from the war were not enough, Europe’s cities quickly got other formidable enemies to reckon with. Brutalism, modernism, post-modernism –which are all variations of the same rubbish, if we're being honest– have been disfiguring large parts of Europeans’ urban landscape into cold and impersonal space. Car culture accelerated the trend, for “efficiency” became more important than anything else.
Top: Brussels' late-XVIIth century architecture. Bottom: Brussels' mid-XXth century architecture.
Last year, the European Commission launched a popular survey on what the “sustainable architecture of the future” should look like. I do not pretend to know the answer to this question, but I can confidently assert what tomorrow’s architecture should not look like. Please let us not waste time discussing how beauty is subjective. If humans from all cultures overwhelmingly find translational and scale symmetries to be beautiful, it is not something that can be written off in the name of cultural relativism. In architecture, there is large consensus when it comes to differentiating an ugly building from a beautiful one – except, perhaps, amongst architects themselves. What is old is beautiful because people striven to make it beautiful. Why then, this insistence on blobs, concrete cubicles, or steel polyhedras? The EU quarter in Brussels itself is quite an illustrative example. It looks like any other corporate district; impersonal, noisy, full of cars, very far removed from the usual seats of public power in Europe, sumptuous buildings of historical significance in pedestrian areas. The buildings of the EU quarter could have well been built in the business districts of Jakarta or São Paolo; nothings makes them stand out now and nothing will make them stand out in the coming centuries. Modern, post-WWII builds are to European architecture what McDonalds is to French or Italian gastronomy; transposable, standardised, unsustainable, and frankly tasteless. No wonder France decided to rebuild the burnt spire of Notre-Dame de Paris according to Viollet-Le-Duc’s original 1859 plans, when they saw what most contemporary architecture bureaus wanted to build instead.
A common response from architects is that older buildings do not have the comfort of modern ones. Perhaps, but I do not see why this must mean modern constructions have be ugly, and designed with such aesthetic disregard to those who will work or live in them. Combining practicality with beauty seems to be a more interesting challenge than building the most strangely-looking bloc that can stand using modern construction techniques. One would think industrial power could make beauty easier to achieve, yet the diametrical opposite happened. Here's is, then, a real challenge for architects. Achieving the beauty of baroque cathedrals using modern standards of insulation, or the elegance of Art Nouveau houses on a large scale with modern, sustainable steel- and glass-making. Wouldn't this be something truly European, and truly embracing European ideals of sustainability and democracy? Beauty should not be the exclusive property of the wealthy, nor has to be. Reintroducing high quality local craftsmanship into buildings instead of commissioning globalised architecture bureaus with globish corporate names for every project, wouldn't that be something a sustainable Europe should embrace?
Trento, Italy. Sustainable and beautiful architecture right in front of our eyes.
Art Nouveau drew inspiration from plant life and its spontaneity, rococo architecture loved nothing but natural mineral shapes, history is full of movements to rediscover if we want to reinvent in a sustainable way of building cities. European architects have three millennia of history behind them, time they live up to this legacy.
This post is an adapted version of my free-form contribution to the EU's call for ideas on what the sustainable architecture of the future should look like.
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