Orientation & Identity

to two-dimensional elements. It should be kept in mind that each
of these elements inevitably opens a space between the beholder
and the signs that are separate design issue. But the relationship
between the symbol bearer and the symbols is clearly connoted
after five hundred years of book printing: the book vanishes as an
object when it is read, the billboard wall takes a step back behind
the motif. Thus the two-dimensional symbol completes a form of
destruction that is has been accused of since the invention of book
printing once applied on architecture. “This will destroy that,” says
one of Victor Hugo’s heroes in “Notre Dame” about the loss of function
of church façades as the “bible of the poor” with the rise of book
printing. Frank Lloyd Wright used this quote in his autobiography to
begin thinking about a new type of architecture that no longer had
to convey meaning in a literal sense. By doing so he reinterpreted
this destruction as liberation. To define the autonomous language
of architecture was one of the irrevocable principles of Modernism.
According to this principle, everything that was two-dimensional
and ornamental was a thing of the past.
Only few Modern trends such as the De Stijl movement tried
to link two and three-dimensional elements. The search for maximal
abstraction that tries to revert three dimensions back to the
one-dimensional surface is the driving force in De Stijl. Historically,
this is an exception that proves the Modernist rule that architecture
should be defined as an autonomous spatial art. But some
current trends speak in favor of a stronger link between two and
three-dimensional elements. Surmounting functionalism did not in
any way lead to the ‘status quo ante’ of architecture that is meaningful
‘per se,’ although some Historicist forms of Post-modernism
hoped to do so for a time. The current condition can actually be
described with the term ‘Post-functionalism’ meaning the acceptance
that function is not a primary meaning in architecture. Robert
Venturi summarized the foundations of this Post-functionalist
position in the 1960s. Modern architecture theory (its beginnings
go back the late 17th century) spent two centuries addressing the
relationship between architectural form and its functional contents.
This was a two-hundred-year material-and-form discussion
that went from an “architecture parlante” (Lequeu’s cow-shaped
cowshed) to the Functionalist “Form follows function” doctrine.
Venturi discredits this doctrine with finality by ridiculing this
strained search for an impossible and useless convergence.
Lequeu’s cowshed is a joke that modern architecture simply didn’t
understand for Venturi. Instead Venturi recommends the “Decorated
Shed” and sees architecture overall as an artificial symbol system.
This opens the way for free play with popular or historical
conventions, which Venturi played with himself. But it also sets the
stage for the Deconstructivist dissolution of all symbol systems in
autonomous architectural formalism.
These trends are stressed by the demand for multiple functions
and variable types of construction. What is built as a school
today can be a home for the elderly or an office building tomorrow.
The borders between public and private spheres are also facing
increasing turbulence. New media breaks into buildings bringing
the world with it, washing away the traditional symbolism of
thresholds. New symbol systems have to take its place that cope
with the increasing dynamics of the negotiation between public
and private and relationships.
Hence architecture is a carrier medium for unstable meanings
today. Buildings change functions, their owners, and their
users. On one hand architecture as a discipline reacts to this with
Post-functionalist ease by designing objects that are as neutral
as possible, that preserve their artistic value, even if their use
changes. Architecture can look back on thousands of years of tradition
including established measurement, number and proportion
rules as well as the artful handling of materials and colors. On the
other hand possibilities are emerging that make it possible to
take all stability out of architectural appearance with dynamically
changeable surfaces. What can be said about a building that has
red halls when you enter it in the morning and green halls when you
leave it? Or a building with messages on its façade that change
daily, wander inside from the façade or even accompany individual
visitors and support them, as they find their way? We will only begin
to gather experience with these things over the next years. A new
symbiosis between symbols and space, between two and three
dimensions, type culture and spatial culture could lie at the end of
this road.
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