The Ideology of Architecture

Peter Kellow RIBA BA BArch (Bristol)

i. Architecture and Ideology

Volume I Number 15

It has become official RIBA policy (following Robert Adam's proposal (p.8, AJ 5th June
2003)), to have architecture schools 'either declare their ideological position or accept a wide
range of architectural approaches'. This means that the professional body now openly
recognises the connection between architecture and ideology. The idea that the dominant
architectural movement of the present, that of Modernism, has a distinct ideology and that by
promoting this architecture its ideology, however that may be defined, is also promoted has
now received official blessing. But more than that, the new policy states that unless a
prejudice is stated, stylistic preference cannot be used as a criterion for assessment and so
there is also here a presumed equivalence between ideology and style.
In my opinion if traditionalists are to make headway in challenging the hegemony of
Modernism, assuming that is what they want to do, a line of attack is going to have to found
that can question the essential tenets of Modernism, and in this the connection between
architecture and ideology, and style and ideology, will be the chief area for exploration, for it is
here that the weakness of the Modernist position can most readily be exposed and a new
radical theory of traditionalism best be formulated.

Towards the end of the last century Modern architecture, in its most unfettered extremist
style, became more entrenched as the dominant style than ever before. Previous vacillations
such as the shallow Post-Modernist style, which had at least made a gesture to history, had
been expunged in favour of an increasingly hardcore Modernism. When reductive
Modernist, David Chipperfield, acted as a jurist for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2003, he
noted in declaring ultra-Modern, neo-Brutalist, Zaha Hadid, the winner that the choice was
'safe'. (Fig 1) He thus he drew attention to how extreme the climate has become.
I believe that the strength of the Modernist position is that the style is backed up by a
persuasive ideology and it is this ideology that cements the dominance of Modernism in our
society - in the architectural press, the architectural schools, the professional bodies and the
establishment in general. Of course, Modernists have never been successful in appealing to
the public at large, but an essential aspect of the movement, which was present from the
outset, is its elitism and so it will never attempt to survive by an appeal to populism.
Right: Fig 1. Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Architect Zaha Hadid 2003
Image provided by Mary Ann Sullivan at Bluffton College, 280 W College Ave Bluffton, Ohio
45817-1196http://www.bluffton.edu
It is likely that its current ascendancy is intrinsically connected to the increasing
metropolitanisation and globalisation of the culture for these are regimes that Modernism
finds congenial. To understand how this elitist movement continues to prosper we need to
start by analysing the exact nature of its binding ideology.
But before embarking on this analysis, two general principles must be stated. Firstly,
Modernism may have an ideology but our aim must never be simply to construct or evoke an
alternative ideology to set up against it, so that we can have a "battle of the ideologies". That
would be the road to an unsavoury and ultimately meaningless conflict. Nor should we
merely attempt to "deconstruct" the Modernist ideology leaving us with a hopeless kit of ideas
cast onto a Post-Modern (in the philosophical sense) landscape lacking any reference points or
usable methodological tools. And neither should we cop out by advocating pluralism which
would allow equal value to all claimants. We need an approach that is at the same time both
subtler and broader, and that goes beyond ideology to allow us a keener and more open
perspective on different ideological claims. We must, above all, avoid the trap that
Modernists, amongst others, have wilfully embraced – that of being prescriptive. If the
position we arrived at laid down in a defined way exactly how we should build and design,
then we would have achieved little advance on the present situation.

Secondly, when we speak of ideology it is not that of the familiar left and right, for our take on
ideology must go both deeper and wider that the banal political categories. However, if we
are going to discuss ideologies we must describe them relative to each other, and that must
mean categorising them in some way. An important part of the task ahead is therefore to
formulate at least some kind of broad classification of ideologies as a way of contrasting one
against another throwing each into perspective and this will enable us to reinvent the
vocabulary and articulate new insights.

To students of comparative ideologies or belief systems, the theories upon which Modern
architecture is founded can be described as metaphysical idealism. This can also be termed
conceptual or abstract idealism. There were two chief Modern theorists; they wrote in the
first half of the last century and their ideas still represent the bedrock of the Modernist
ideology, which has not changed significantly since its inception. Both of these theorists were
Swiss, one German speaking, the other French speaking. The German speaker wrote out of
the tradition of nineteenth century German metaphysical idealism that, if not begun by, had
its first heavyweight philosopher in G.W.F.Hegel (1770-1831). The French speaker wrote out
of the more ancient tradition of Mediterranean based idealism that we commonly regard as
springing from the pen of Plato. If Hegel is never specifically cited in Seigfried Giedion's
Space, Time and Architecture his presence can be felt on practically every one of its key pages
(passing over the interminably long and turgid later sections). In le Corbusier's Towards a
New Architecture Plato is cited and likewise the strong influence of Platonic idealism can be
felt on every page. Thus the Modernist ideology is founded on two quite different
philosophers, each representing a different strand of metaphysical idealism.

You might ask at this point: would the average jobbing (or even signature!) Modern architect
be able to tell you with any precision what Hegel or Plato said? And so you might question
whether they still exert any real influence. The answer to this is that certain key ideas of both
philosophers have become so ingrained in the present day thinking (not only in architecture
but in many intellectual fields) that they have become the almost invisible assumptions people
make in tackling many tasks. These need to be unravelled if we are to make any progress in
characterising contemporary culture, and contemporary architecture in particular, and
exposing its failings. The words of John Maynard Keynes are relevant here when he said of
the field of political economics: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers … are more
powerful than commonly supposed. Practical men who believe themselves to be quite
exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist". So
this can be applied to architects who have been handed down and have accepted, through
Modernist ideology, the Hegelian world view and the idealism of Plato, probably without
being in any sense aware of the fact.

ii. The Theory of Modernism

To consider Giedion first, the important idea from Hegel that Giedion incorporated into his
theory of architecture was Hegel's view of history. Hegel is generally seen as the first
philosopher to use history as a central element of philosophy (although his interpretation can
be related to earlier ideas by Herder and Fichte). Hegel notably gave us the notion of the
zeitgeist (the time spirit -spirit of the time). Crudely this idea is that each age, however 'age'
might be defined, has associated with it an underlying force that determines, or at least
influences, everything that happens or is produced by that age. From the examples that
Hegel gave it is clear he meant that a zeitgeist should be defined by both time and place, not
just time, and like many words from philosophy that have passed into common usage, the
idea of the zeitgeist has an essential reasonableness. If we look at products of a certain 'age',
say, the Italian Renaissance, Europe in the Middle Ages, we can see a kind of commonality.
So tangible is this sense of items belonging to a particular place and time that if we look at a
photograph of, say, an unidentified building we can usually assign to it a rough date and
location. There is clearly something in this idea, therefore. The problem is that in the hands
of a skilled German metaphysician a fairly simple, commonsense notion is turned into a
powerful instrument of persuasion and a building block for a prescriptive ideology.

Hegel was far too subtle a thinker to let the ramifications and the problematic nature of the
notion of zeitgeist pass without addressing them (and typically turning the difficulties into
virtues) but Giedion, with whom we are primarily concerned, was not such a subtle thinker.
Supposing we accept, with Giedion and Hegel, the idea of the zeitgeist – the spirit of the time.
The question then is what are we going to do with it. Heinrich Wölfflin, the nineteenth
century German architectural theorist (whom Giedion acknowledged as his great influence)
had used the notion in regarding periods of history and seeing a consequential unity, Giedion,
however, used it to talk, not only about history, but also about the present and the immediate
past. He used it to formulate a view, not just of whypeople built as they did in the past, but of
how they should be building now. The result of this, as with all Hegel-inspired ideas, is that
there is practically no room for manoeuvre. Giedion asserted that his historical and
contemporary analysis could show us what the current zeitgeist exactly was. This is
questionable enough, but he then went on to take a next logical step that confirms him as a
fundamentally metaphysical idealist thinker. Having defined the zeitgeist as he saw it, he
then said that we must obey it.

The immediate obvious question, that this view gives us, is to ask: where can free will coexist
with all of this? If we must design in a certain way, what has happened to imagination and
personal preference? The same question confronts the other great Hegel-derived ideology,
Marxism, to which Modernism in architecture can claim to be only second in influence and
effect. Hegel, himself, dealt with this problem, as he dealt with all difficulties, by confronting
it head on – in this case, with his theory of "alienation" (which we need not go into) - but his
followers, in Marx and Giedion, do not face up to this problem.

This brings us an important consequence of the idealism of Giedion's influential modernist

theory – its prescriptive, intolerant nature. This has ensured that it has become not merely
one interpretation among several but a whole orthodox ideology, and like all ideologies is
unable to allow disaffecting views. This is why the architectural establishment is so
vehemently opposed to any building that presents an alternative to the Modernist orthodoxy
and probably why they increasingly favour the most extreme modernist buildings, as they
deem these as best serving the promotional needs of their preferred ideology. This tendency
exists with many belief systems based on metaphysical theories for what their proponents seek
to do is to invoke a single higher force that dictates our actions for us. In this case this higher
force is represented by the spirit of the times, what Giedion in sinister fashion also calls the
"anonymous aims of the period" (or what Marxists call the "historical imperative").

Giedion's argument would not have had much influence if he had not gone on to attempt to
characterise the nature of the influence on contemporary architecture of this obedience to the
zeitgeist. For this he had to first characterise the zeitgeist. He could no doubt have picked
any number of aspects of society to do this but the one he chose was technology. He made
the simple claim that, because there was a general shift from craft based manufacture to
machine manufacture, the machine was the key to characterising our age and so it was the
machine that should provide the inspiration for the new architecture. Machines are by their
nature "functional" and unyielding and it was these qualities that should be imported into the
look and design method of buildings, and above all they should form a substitute for the
stylistic elements that had always been a part of architecture up until then.

But there was an important further aspect to the new architecture and for this we need to
turn to le Corbusier's Platonic tract, and see how this architect sought to realise the supposedly
eternal truths in Plato's idealism through his buildings. Corb, early on, states his millennial
pronouncements: "A great epoch begun. There exists a new spirit…" which would have been
equally at home in Giedion's great work, and then goes on to make it clear that for him this
should be expressed through pure mathematics and geometry. He says;" …cubes, cones,
spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great forms … these are beautiful forms, the most
beautiful forms" and that "Architecture is the art above all others which achieves a state of
Platonic grandeur, mathematical order". Le Corbusier takes it for granted that there is great
merit in the Platonic doctrine of ideal forms for it is this that underpins his theory. But what
exactly does it say?

The concept of ideal forms, which we associate with Plato, and that has been so influential in
variable measure down the ages since its inception, holds up, what is, on the face of it, a fairly
unlikely principle. We normally understand the world as a collection of particulars which we
are able, through our habit of generalisation by means of language, to group according to
certain concepts. So, for instance, I have the table in my sitting room and the table in my
kitchen and I have no difficulty in seeing them as two quite distinct and different objects that
I conveniently link with the simple notion signified by the word "table". The concept of a
table is thus secondary to the particular tables that we meet. Plato, however, is not satisfied
with this scenario and seeks to turn it on its head by giving primacy to the concept of the table
over the particular versions of it. In doing so he introduces a notion that has reverberated
down through the history of western ideas, and this is that this concept corresponds to an
"ideal" version of a table, of which the particular ones are inferior copies. This is the familiar
"Platonic ideal".

This philosophy is fraught with problematic implications, that philosophers have been able to
argue about ever since, but what concerns us here is perhaps the most obvious one and this is:
If these ideals exist, where are they? Plato, like the great philosopher that he is, does not duck
this question, and to answer it accepts the only logical conclusion. He places these ideal
forms not within the strictly material world that we know but within an altogether different
realm – what came to be known as the "metaphysical" realm. What, or where, is the
metaphysical realm? Well, it is not like the supernatural realm, which exists on some kind of
higher plane, it exists more as system of hidden forces and laws influencing and controlling
the world we see. We saw how the metaphysical forces that Hegel imagined worked on the
historical changes we experience. In Plato metaphysics shapes the physical world we see.
And in both there is the strong implication that the metaphysical has primacy over the
physical.

Le Corbusier tells us: "It is necessary to press on towards the establishment ofstandards in
order to face the problems of perfection" and he sees the machine as central to this end for the
machine is based on engineering and so is uncontaminated by human interference and so
achieves purity and perfection. In emphasising the machine he is in agreement with Giedion,
but his Platonic idealism adds in another element that becomes a primary element in his
earliest most revolutionary buildings. This is the desire to reduce all the building components
and the very vocabulary of architecture to the most minimal elements almost as if they were
merely graphical representations.
If we view his "International Style" buildings of the thirties (such as the Villa Savoie, near
Paris, Fig 2) we see buildings expunged of all references to, for instance, the physical reality of
weather, for there are no, or virtually no, drips, cills, overhangs, recessed windows or any
other device that traditionally have equipped a building in Europe to deal with the exigencies
of weather.

Fig 2. Villa Savoye. Poissy near Paris. Architect le Corbusier. 1929

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But not only is the reality of weather denied, the innate sense of structure, that informs our
reading of a building, is challenged for, instead of a clear sense of window openings in a solid
masonry wall, we have "ribbon" windows drawn onto a white canvas of wall, so attempting
to reverse our sense of how buildings enclose. The ultimate aim of all this contrivance is far
from the rationality of the machine that both Giedion and le Corbusier admired, for the
functional demands of climate and structure are ignored. No the real aim here is to express
the pure world of geometry and mathematics that is conjured up by Plato's metaphysics that
le Corbusier was so fascinated by. The building no longer needs to dwell in the real world
with its practical needs. It is displaced to a metaphysical reality where only the ideal forms
need exist. It evokes an abstract higher plane where we can contemplate the new era
untrammelled by the baggage of past culture and the mundane demands of physicality.

The preceding has attempted to briefly characterise the modern movement ideology in respect
of certain of its basis principles, but, if we are going to truly understand this ideology, we will
need to place it in relation to ideas in other fields contemporary with it and also suggest the
larger historical context in which its underlying philosophical precepts lie. The ideas of Hegel
and Plato that inspired our modern theorists, whilst, as indicated earlier, contributed certain
concepts that nowadays are so widespread within certain fields as to be almost invisible, have
endured a rocky ride in the past. Hegel's quasi-religious philosophy ran counter to pragmatic
thinkers like John Stuart Mill in England and Dewey in the United States in the nineteenth
century, and Plato, whilst still respected well into the late Roman Empire, lost favour in
Mediaeval Europe with the rediscovery of the far more plausible Aristotle, through contact
with the Islamic world which had preserved his recorded ideas. Plato's ideas are always
haunted by their association with the Pythagorean cult and the Occult in general to which
indeed they are close, and it is worth noting in passing that the Platonism in Corb's first major
book gave way to a full blown numerology in the later Modulor which reflected the great
architect's well-attested strong interest in the Kabbalah and other forms of esotericism.
Modern architecture was not born in a vacuum and to understand its ideology it would be
helpful to have an overall view of certain trends in ideas during the last century. Although I
believe that the Modernist ideology has much in common with other dogmas that came to the
fore in that century within the context of this essay I have space to consider only one. And
this is the one that Modernism shares its philosophical roots.

iii. Gnostic Ideologies

I will discuss Marxism, because it shares its Hegelian roots with Modernist ideology and so
relates to some of what has already been said. It is perhaps an easy target because it is
generally regarded as being discredited pretty well worldwide, although this loss of faith
occurred in the west later than some other parts. (People from Russia, for instance, visiting
the west in the nineteen fifties and sixties were generally astonished to find people who
believed in Marxist ideology, for there were none left in the country from which they had
come.) It is not worth dwelling on the failure of the Marxist socio-economic experiment for
this is too familiar, but what I would wish to emphasise is the way in which Marx adapted
Hegel's world historical view to what he called a "materialist" view of history. One of the
most outlandish ideas in Hegel, but one that is absolutely central to his thinking, is the idea
that all history is tending towards a condition of "Absolute Mind" or "Absolute Spirit", and that
every event, good or bad, that we see happening, is a part of this overarching process. It is
because of his belief in this idea of Absolute Mind or Spirit that Hegel is always regarded as a
supremely metaphysical thinker for, under Hegel's system, events we experience in the real
world become subordinate to this grand concept. In the same way our individual lives
become subordinate to the greater abstract processes that he constructs.

Marx had no need for this quasi-religious aspect of Hegel and in place of the Absolute Spirit he
constructed his socialist utopia as the ultimate goal of history. He went on from this to claim
to have discovered the "scientific" principles which govern the march of history and which
make the realisation of this utopia "inevitable". In fact, his description of the mechanism by
which history proceeded from one stage to the next was simply lifted from Hegel, but the
details of this we need not go into.

What is important to the present discussion is the nature of Marx's utopian ideal, because it is
this that has such a close relationship to Modernist theory. In fact, one of the interesting
points about the latter is that together with Marxism it forms the duumvirate of highly
influential ideologies that are derived from Hegel. But influential is hardly a strong enough
word for these two belief systems, one of which transformed the political and economic lives
of countless millions of people and the other of which transformed our cities forever. The
discredited social "utopias" that Marxism produced almost exactly parallel the architectural
"utopias" that the Modern movement promoted and in many cases executed. Both were
prepared to sacrifice the needs and aspirations of individuals for the sake of higher goals and
both, thanks to the Hegelian base of their ideology, retained with absolute certainty that what
they wanted to achieve was not just desirable, but inevitable. This rejection of the liberal,
humanist legacy of western culture was there fully formed in Hegel's Counter-Enlightenment
metaphysical dream. The Marxist style of demotion of the individual may have fallen by the
wayside but Modernism has not yet suffered this demise.
 It continues to promote an architecture that sees technological power and abstract aesthetics
as emblematic of a new world leaving little place for any individual sense of what is practical
or beautiful.
Marxism and Modernism are typical of the types of ideology that Frederick Crews was
referring to when writing in the New York Review of Books in September 9, 1996. In his
article he spoke of the notion of "gnosticism" which he defined as follows: "Gnosticism,
broadly, conceived is the intuitive apprehension of deep truth without a felt need for
corroborating evidence." (To be clear Crews was referring here to gnosticism with a small "g"
and not the specific Gnosticism we associate with various religion sects and movements that
have existed at different times down the centuries.) Crews's meaning of "gnosticism" can be
understood by opposing it to the more familiar term "agnosticism". I believe that gnosticism
is common to many ideologies that were important in the twentieth century and Marxism
and Modernism are no exceptions.

It is within the context of the overriding gnostic ideologies of the twentieth century that
Modernism can be understood. The certainties expressed by its major theorists, Siegfried
Giedion and le Corbusier, and repeated many times by its protagonists in spite of its manifest
proven failure to provide satisfactory environments, mark it out as a gnostic movement. The
intolerance towards dissenting voices displayed by the architectural professional bodies, the
architectural press, the architectural schools and architects themselves is typical of those who
are wedded with absolute certainty to an unprovable hypothesis, those who have in Crews's
words accepted a "deep truth without a felt need for corroborating evidence".

I wish now to try to show how the ideas, that came to the fore in the last century, did so as a
result of a process of change that can be traced back in historical time. Often people talk of the
"triumph" of Modernism as if it is the victor in a battle that had to be won and I believe that
this interpretation is not so far from the truth. We need to try to understand the struggle that
led to its dominance in order to see more clearly what it represents and moreover what the
"vanquished" opponents represent.
iv. Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
Fig 3. British Museum. Architect Robert Smirke. 1857
Copyright (c) 2006 Peter Kellow. See Fig 2 for details of copyright. http://en.wikipedia.org
What Modern architecture defeated must be the same thing as it displaced, and what it
displaced we may quite simply describe as traditional architecture. I think we know more or
less what modern architecture is but how can we describe traditional architecture? We know
it comes in different styles and forms but how can these be classified? In the first place, we
should distinguish between styled traditional and vernacular traditional architecture. Styled
architecture, such as classical (Fig. 3) or gothic, takes an established set of architectural
forms, we might call a canon, and imitates and adapts these to create the new building.
However much the new building may improvise on the style, the latter nevertheless remains
present in the final design and is essential to its rhetorical power.

Authentic vernacular buildings (Fig. 4) do not imitate in this way but derive their design
elements from a functional use of the materials and working practice available, and these
evolve into something that is visually harmonious. A vernacular tradition may ossify into
something approaching a style but if enough functional integrity is preserved the artifice
associated with a truly styled architecture will be not be present.
Fig. 4. Hope Cottages, Devon, England
Photo by permission of Bob Croxford of Atmosphere Postcards www.atmosphere.co.uk
The interesting thing about styled traditional architecture, as opposed tovernacular, is that, up
until the late nineteenth century, the style always derives from religious architecture, and this
is true not only of our home-grown European styles of Classical and Gothic but also of
traditional styles throughout the globe.

The nineteenth century exceptions to this rule are the widespread late "regionalist"styles such
as Arts and Crafts in England (Fig. 5), Modernista in North Eastern Spain (Fig. 6), the Prairie
School in America's mid-west (Fig. 7), and so on, but all of these to a greater or lesser degree
were founded on local vernacular architecture and on the local environment, for it was in this
way that they established the regionalist credentials they sought. By contrast reference to the
religion-inspired Classical or Gothic imply a degree of universality for this was contained in
the original religions and mythologies that inspired these styles - even if the way each
interpreted thatuniversality was different.

Fig 5 The Barn Hotel, Exmouth, Devon, England. Architect Edward Prior. Designed 1896
By permission of Barn Hotel, Foxholes Hill, Exmouth Devon EX8 2DF. Tel: (0)1395 224411.
Fax. (0)1395 225445 Resident proprietors: Jeffrey & Cheryl Dobinson [email protected]
The diversity of traditional architecture is essential to it, for this is one of the aspects that
ensures that it does not embrace a partisan ideology. But, more fundamentally, it does not
need any ideology for it seeks its foundations in what went before. Rather than come up with
a grand theory to determine how to build, it pragmatically draws from what went before to
build upon it.

This approach is the converse of the avant-gardism of the Modernist outlook which places all
virtue in achieving a rupture with the past. It may at first sight seem paradoxical, but this
feature of traditional architecture does not mean it is backward looking, in fact, by its nature
it has a surer eye on the future and the excitements it contains than Modernism could ever
have and this for one simple reason.
The Modernist ethos is, at base, a rehash of reactionary principles that have surfaced from
time to time throughout the history of western culture. These have always served the same
purpose and set out to achieve the same aims, and this is to annul the advance of, what I
would broadly term, humanist principles whether these be of a universalistnature seeking to
find the commonality that exist between all humans or of a regionalistnature seeking to
articulate and express the particularities that make up the planet we inhabit. I would argue
that the last great flowering of universalising humanism can be equated with what we
generally call the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the last flowering of
regionalism was spawned by the Enlightenment becoming the Romantic movement of the
early nineteenth century which it turn lead onto the powerful regionalist movements that
reached their heyday just before the dawn of the twentieth century. To understand how
Modernism managed to supplant both the Enlightenment and regionalist legacies so
completely, we need to understand the natural antagonism that exists between pro- and
counter-Enlightenment.

Right:
Fig 6. Can Rei, Carrer Bolseria, Palma, Mallorca.. Circa 1900. Photo Peter Kellow
The Enlightenment was importantly anti-metaphysical. It is often remarked that it produced
no great original philosophers. But this is for a very good reason. It was not interested in
philosophy, for philosophy in its western form always means metaphysics to a greater or
lesser degree. The Enlightenment, like the Humanist tradition of the Italian Renaissance
before it, was more interested in the pragmatic issues of law and government and the guiding
principles of morality. Even Bertrand Russell, who in many ways can be considered a late
Enlightenment figure with his determination to address down-to-earth issues with plain
language, wrote that throughout his philosophical development he tried unsuccessfully to free
himself from Pythogoreanism. That is to say he understood how the ghost of metaphysics
always haunts endeavour in the field of western philosophy.

Of course, the problem of discussing the Enlightenment is that it may mean many different
things to different people, to the extent that some may question whether is it even a valid term
at all. I believe the best interpretation of the Enlightenment is as an essentially Humanist
movement that sought to place reason above superstition, morality above retribution, and put
betterment of conditions in this life before betterment of those in the next.
Right:
Fig7. Copyright (c) 2006 Peter Kellow. See Fig 2 for details of copyright.
http://en.wikipedia.org
It was above all a secular movement and it represents an attempt to suggest how humans can
organise their affairs free of religious dictate. It was also pragmatic and down-to-earth and
this is why metaphysics was not amenable to it. The new "physics-simple" on the other hand
was amenable to it, for it rested, following Newton, on empirical observations. I think part of
the confusion of what the Enlightenment represents arises from sometimes including in it
certain figures that are difficult to locate in the humanist tradition. If we limit the
Enlightenment to significant figures such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Jefferson, and
others we bring it altogether more clearly into focus and can appreciate more easily what
were its lasting contributions and its lasting benefits. One advantage that follows from this
view is that it brings into sharper focus the real nature of the Counter-Enlightenment that
followed it and just as it helps to define the Counter-Enlightenment so the nature of the
Counter-Enlightenment throws light on the achievements of the Enlightenment.
I realise, of course, that many people would take issue with this benign view of the
Enlightenment and prefer to blame the Enlightenment for exactly the tendency to abstraction
and to over-rationalisation that I have criticised. This is the view of Post-Modern
philosophers such as Michel Foucault and others. The emphasis I have adopted is suggested
in the writings of Robert Darnton (See George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional
Guide to the Eighteenth Century. Robert Darnton. (2003)) and in a broader way in the
writings of Sir Isaiah Berlin.)

Whereas the origin of the Enlightenment we may think of as being French the origin of the
Counter-Enlightenment was German. Although he was preceded by other thinkers that
presented challenges to the basic tenets of the Enlightenment, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel who first proposed a complete philosophy that was diametrically opposed to everything
the Enlightenment stood for. Not only did he make claims that firmly belonged to the
metaphysical realm, that Voltaire and Jefferson would have derided, he aligned these claims
with a fervent nationalism for the Prussian state that was anathema to the sense of common
humanity that the Enlightenment embraced. Why would he wish to do this and why should
his ideas gain such currency as they did? I think the only way to understand this is to
understand the fear that Enlightenment created, for the open democratic and secular ideals
that it implied were felt to be threatening. The Counter-Enlightenment ideals of Hegel, as I
mentioned earlier, provided an argument against free will, as the impositions of the zeitgeist
became primary over all others. So, it is possible to view the nineteenth century as a struggle
between those who tried to build on the achievements of the Enlightenment and those who
wished to counter it with a return to a rigid way of thinking that gave its adherents the
reassuring certainty that only a closed ideology can deliver. But to understand this struggle
we need to consider another key figure of the German Counter-Enlightenment whose
contribution to metaphysics has particular relevance to a trend in Modernist architecture that
seems to be gaining a predominance even as we enter the twenty-first century: Friedrich
Nietzsche.

As I have said before, metaphysical systems can be understood according to where they place
the ultimate and most important force or forces that determine the nature of our existence.
This is equally true of all types of belief systems, and so for instance in the case of a religion
such as Islam the most important force is in God. In the myths of the ancient Greeks the
fundamental forces reside in a collection of gods and god-like personages. The Romantic
poet, like Wordsworth, will see Nature as containing the most basic impetus in the world. In
the metaphysics of Hegel the fundamental force governing all our lives is the force of history
and its directness towards the Absolute Spirit. At any particular point in time the zeitgeist
decides everything in favour of this onward movement. The revival of metaphysics was
intrinsic to the Counter-Enlightenment of the nineteenth century but this wasn't only the
metaphysics of Hegel.

Nietzsche proposed a quite different metaphysical universe but a metaphysical universe

nevertheless. Whereas Hegel had described a force that lay outside and beyond the
individual, Nietzsche put all force and power within the individual. But his concern for the
individual had nothing to do with the Enlightenment concern for individual rights and how
they should be balanced and accommodated, he invested a metaphysical power in the
particular individual that then transcended any power in others. To do this he evoked one
particular aspect of any individual – not their emotions, not their morality, not their
spirituality, not their creativity. He invoked the pure and primal force of their will. He used
the idea of the will to describe his so-called "Übermensch" - the superman. This superman
and his will thus became dominant in the lives of all and arbiter of them and with this vision
Nietzsche was able to jettison much of the baggage of our Christian culture, which he
despised, going beyond any sense of morality and dispensing with any of the familiar
humanist concerns about the way society should best be organised for the good of all. The
parallels with Fascism are obvious and apologists of Nietzsche are always hard-pressed to
deny them and, as we know, the Nazis eagerly co-opted Nietzsche as a fellow spirit and
precursor.

Nietzsche may at first sight seem to the opposite of Hegel but in reality they are two sides of
the same coin. Hegel presages Marxism and Nietzsche presages Nazism. Hegel saw his
metaphysical force standing above any particular individual, whereas Nietzsche investing his
in the will of an individual. But they are similar just as Marxism and Nazism have
similarities in that they both represent challenges to the humanist legacy of the
Enlightenment and so together they can be seen as making up the German
Counter-Enlightenment. We saw how the figure of Hegel is fundamental to the ideology of
Modernism but the influence of Nietzsche has also become important in the Modernist ethos
and just as he and Hegel represent two sides of the same coin of nineteenth century German
philosophy so the ideas of these two correspond to two sides of the Modernist coin. But to
appreciate this fully we need to appreciate how the character of so much of the culture of the
twentieth century is that of the Counter Enlightenment – how the twentieth century
succeeded in driving out the humanist gains that the eighteenth century Enlightenment
promised to guaranty. To do this we must look a little more closely at the struggle for
western culture that took place in the nineteenth century throughout practically the whole of
Europe.

The nineteenth century, in contrast to the twentieth, was, at least in Europe, an era largely of
peace. Following the end of the Napoleonic wars, the "Metternich settlement", established at
the Congresses of Vienna of 1814-15, guaranteed the form of the power structures and spheres
of influence in Europe that broadly would survive until the First World War, although some
changes did take place, and these would be crucial to the development of the twentieth
century wars. What it is important to note about the map of Europe during the nineteenth
century is that it shows an arrangement of empires rather than nation states. The heart of
Europe (we in the west tend to refer to it as " Eastern Europe") was occupied by the Austrian
Empire. The other German-speaking lands to the west and north of this were know as the
German Confederation, which corresponded roughly to the old Holy Roman Empire. To the
east were the Russian Empire, which included the Kingdom of Poland, and the Ottoman
Empire which had reached the limits of its expansion westwards. To the south the land that
was to become the nation of Italy, was a loose federation known as the Papal States. Only in
the west did you find what we would recognise as "conventional" nation-states in the
Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal and the Kingdom of Great Britain. The last was, of
course, also an imperial state but had no substantial possessions on the European mainland.
France and Spain whilst having centralised state structures were large enough to have
important regions within them and these regions were recognised to a greater or lesser extent
in the political arrangements. Along with the predominantly imperial nature of nineteenth
century Europe, it is this regional nature that I would also wish to stress.

It may seem paradoxical but regions and empires often go hand in hand. (Incidentally, it
has often been pointed out that in our own time there has been a return to regionalism in
Europe thanks to the EC. The EC is not an empire but it provides the same kind of
supranational political structure that favours regionalist tendencies.) Only where the empire
is run on extreme autocratic lines do regions and empires not easily co-exist. Of the European
empires I am discussing only the Russian Empire could really be said to belong to that
category, for it was in the nature of the others to seek accommodation with regionalist
tendencies to a greater or lesser degree. The result was a flowering of regionalism and a
flowering of culture and self-determination in general, and we are still the beneficiaries of this
legacy even if we do not always prize it perhaps as highly as we should. Also the legacy of the
Enlightenment was very much alive in the politics of the era and this lead to increased
educational prospects, better sanitation and health care, more political emancipation, the
provision of public services and so on and so on, in many, if not all, parts of Europe. Great
strides were made in the physical and medical sciences and these helped to underpin economic
growth. The relative freedom from war enabled commerce to develop and this in turn lead to
dynamic regional economies that were usually centred around a growing regional capital.
But there was a black cloud on the horizon. This was nationalism, and it is with the mention
of nationalism that we return to our theme of the struggle between pro-Enlightenment and
Counter-Enlightenment forces.
The Enlightenment principles of recognising our common humanity, whilst simultaneously
taking into account individual aspirations, sat easily with the political realities of the
Metternich settlement.

The acceptance of the rights of others to self-determination guaranteed by imperial

structures might on the face of it have lead to several centuries of harmonious development
instead of just the one. As I hope I have shown, it was the rejection of humanist pragmatism
and the return to metaphysical idealism that was the chief driver against our profiting from
the liberation in our thought that the eighteenth century had produced. Once we began to
abandon and reject the Enlightenment the door was again open for fear and irrationalism to
return. In political terms, as the nineteenth century progressed, this fear, this irrationality,
coalesced on the one hand around the kind of strong unquestionable nation state that Hegel
favoured and on the other on unquestionable subservience to the will of a single individual
that Nietzsche had favoured. In broader terms, the appeal to metaphysical forces more and
more stamped itself on the character of our intellectual culture. The name of science became
corrupted by pseudo-sciences such as Marxism, Darwinism, and Freudianism. As the
nineteenth century turned into the twentieth the heady mix of futurist progress provided by
Hegelianism and Darwinism lead to the notion of the avant-garde in art and architecture
whereby tradition was jettisoned as having no value, no relevance.

With the coming of the twentieth century the victory of the Counter-Enlightenment held
sway over events. In political terms, Germany had transformed itself from a loose
assemblage of independent principalities into a unified modern state, the Papal States had
disappeared in favour of a unified Italy and the old empires of Austro-Hungary and Russian
had suffered the stresses and strains of their dissipated power structures. Nationalism of a
particularly jingoistic variety had taken hold in practically every part of Europe.
Regionalism, once the source of economic and cultural dynamism, was seen as merely a
threat to national unity. Enlightenment ideals, concerning the commonality that all humans
share, had little place in this universe of fear and distrust and they were almost completely
burnt up in the ensuing conflagration. It might have been expected that the First World War
would have prompted a return to the core European values, but this was not to be, for the
sense of dislocation with the old world was so total that people were more inclined to put faith
in what seemed to them to be new and invigorating. The problem was that these ideas, that
were thought of as being new, were in reality ideas that had been around for years. They
may not have been occupying fully the centre stage, for, during the nineteenth century, they
had comprised only one side of the argument but when they fully surfaced they did so dressed
in new clothing fit for the new century.

It was in this way that Modernism entered into the lifeblood of western civilisation. Its
surface was bright and shiny. It seemed to beckon a world where only Mediterranean
sunlight was possible and where humans would shed their customary desires and foibles in
favour of a brave new world of order and mechanisation. Few people bothered to notice that
the Modernist utopia had no positive rhetoric of its own but relied for its content on a negative
rejection of what went before. It was not a new tradition but simply the absence of the old
one. It founded its reactionary ideology on other already existing reactionary ideologies. Its
vision of an abstract world was supported theoretically by the anti-humanism of Hegel and
Nietzsche and the quasi-occultism of Plato.
As we enter the twenty first century it would appear that the Nietzschian metaphysics of the
will has, if only temporarily, overtaken the Hegelian/Giedion metaphysics of the technological
zeitgeist, for increasingly wilful outlandish buildings are taking centre stage in the fashion
stakes of contemporary architecture.
Right: Fig 8 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Architect Frank Gehry, 1997.
Image provided by Mary Ann Sullivan at Bluffton College, 280 W College Ave Bluffton, Ohio
45817-1196 http://www.bluffton.edu
It was Sir Herbert Read who observed in the nineteen thirties that Modern art had two
distinct types: the formal and the expressive.

The same distinction has always existed in Modern architecture. In spite of the apparent gulf
between say a Frank Gehry building (Fig. 8 ) and a Norman Foster building (Fig. 9 )
(ignoring his recent excursions into zoomorphology) we feel intuitively that they are singing
from essentially the same hymn book and, indeed, buildings as disparate as these exist happily
side-by-side on the pages of the architectural magazines. The reason for this is that, as we
have seen, both promote the metaphysical agenda. They may be different types of attempts to
impose on us abstract forces at a remove from our intuitive sense of beauty and reason but
they have the same base ideology.
Fig 9 Law Faculty Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge University. Architect Norman Foster
1995. Image provided by Mary Ann Sullivan at Bluffton College, 280 W College Ave Bluffton,
Ohio 45817-1196 http://www.bluffton.edu

v. Traditionalism and Humanism

It is a theme of this essay that the manner or style in which we build is associated with and
underpinned by a way of thinking. In the case of twentieth century modernism this was an
ideological worldview which was founded on pre-existing metaphysical theories, but the way
of thinking does not have to be this type, or any type, of ideology. Indeed, ideologies because
of their overarching nature do not sit easily with ways of building that are more open and less
theoretical than modernism. In particular what we would broadly describe as traditionalism
has no need of a grand ideology from which to work from, for by its nature it refers to
experience, rather than theory, in making aesthetic and practical decisions. Traditionalism
may work from certain principles of design and construction but these do not have to be fitted
into any overall framework. However, there is a sense in which I believe traditionalism in
architecture can be aligned with a tradition of thought in western society that goes back
explicitly to Roman times and implicitly back to ancient Greek. This is the tradition of what
can broadly be described as "humanism". As I have shown Modernism formed part of the
denial of the humanist legacy of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the
counter-Enlightenment is, in my view, the key to understanding the history of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.

Humanism has formed a strand of western civilisation ever since the latter's inception and
whether we recognise it or not it still is a principle governor of our practice of governance,
morality, legality and education. We owe its main articulated formulations to three ages –
the late Roman republic (Cicero et al), the Italian renaissance (Petrarch et al) and the
eighteenth century Enlightenment (Voltaire et al). As I have already said, humanism is
naturally anti-ideology and anti-metaphysics, for it places all the emphasis on practice. It
recognises the imperfections of the human spirit and its conduct and seeks to devise societal
structures that can accommodate these and to a degree reconcile them. Unlike Marxism it is
avowedly non-Utopian and knows only too well that society will always be bound by conflicts
and strife and that the hearts of individuals will always contain a miscreant element as well as
a noble one. The Marxist project of "perfecting" the individual would always be alien to the
humanist one.

Humanism may be largely secular but it is not against religion in any sense for indeed
societies founded on its principles have always been tolerant of religion. It is simply that
humanism is not very interested in religion for the obvious reason that religion cannot by its
nature be encompassed within the pragmatic programme that it wishes to implement. But
then there are other things that humanism is not very interested in, as, for instance, one of
the criticisms often laid at its door is that it is too anthropocentric and that it ignores, even
exploits, nature and so is anti-ecological. I think the humanist response to this must be along
the lines that just because the humanist agenda does not embrace nature this does not imply
that nature is unimportant. Humanism is not an overarching ideology. The narrowness of
its compass can be seen as a virtue. In this I think humanism can be seen as the antithesis of
what philosophers call "naturalism" and by understanding the meaning of this term we can
better locate the humanist position.

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica naturalism is defined as "a theory... affirming that all
beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural.
Consequently all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation."
The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought draws the conclusion as to how naturalism
regards human beings and states that it "sees mind as dependent upon, included within, or
emergent from, material nature, and not as being prior to or in some way more real than it."
The counter-view (anti-naturalism) "assumes that human beings are so different from the
subject matter of the natural sciences that quite different approaches are needed for their
study. Thus, in studying human beings, one can communicate with them, and attempt to
understand the meanings of their words and deeds, whereas a physicist cannot in the same
way communicate with the physical substances and mechanisms that he or she studies. A
related view is that human behaviour and mental processes cannot be explained in terms of
the physical and chemical, or physiological processes in the human body and that no amount
of the study of the structure of the human brain and the processes that occur in it can explain
the way people think, decide, act, feel, etc.".

To put this another way, for naturalists there is a continuity between the physical world and
the human world whereas for anti-naturalists there is a radical discontinuity. Darwinism is
an important example of naturalism, for by stating that evolution took place gradually it
implies that humans must have evolvedgradually from apes or other animals and so claims a
continuity between humanity and nature in general.

If evolution is gradual in the way Darwin and his twentieth century followers claim then it
follows that humans are continuing to evolve. In other words human beings, as we speak,
are modifying themselves or are being modified. This view of the modifiable human being is
implicit in the avant-garde conception of art and architecture – how many times have we
been told that even if people do not like this or that latest Modernist creation now they will
come to in a few decades, or perhaps centuries, as if we might biologically change our eyes or
our brains to suit the new order. It is also implicit in the Marxist model where the individual
is seen as endlessly mouldable and Soviet Russia explicitly sought the creation of a new
individual suited to the new utopian state. Whether in the scientific sense humans do really
change in this way (and there is no evidence that they do any more than there is evidence for
the gradual evolution of species in general that Darwin postulated) for humanists is almost
beside the point, as the naturalist view of humanity contains one enormous difficulty for them
- it must dispense entirely with morality.
This point was well brought out by Charles Siegel in INTBAU essay volume 1, number 9, "An
Architecture for Our Time" when discussing the "New Humanism" on page 8. He writes: "In
moral philosophy, we need an ethics based on human nature. When a reductionist scientist
like James Watson, one of the discoverers of DNA, says that we should use genetic
engineering to improve the human race, we need to be able to answer that, as soon as he
begins talking about changing human nature, he steps into a moral void where the word
"improve" no longer has any meaning.". Integral to humanism is the idea of the
immutability for human nature. For if human beings can change their nature then their
morality changes with it and so we loose any sense of the very idea of morality and with
morality cast aside we open the door to all forms of inhumanity possible. But to say this is
not to suggest an unrealised abstract principle, for during the twentieth century the effect of
embracing the possibility of modifying human beings was played out to its obscene and
horrifying conclusions. The metaphysical doctrines of Marxism and Fascism taught people
how to abandon their own sense of humanity for the sake of "higher" ideals and took them to
depths of depravity and inhumanity that the world had not seen before.

But, as well as the abandonment of morality, there is a further element that is cast aside when
we start to see human beings as mutable that is presumably of more direct relevance to
architects – beauty. If we can change our nature and our morality, our sense of what is
beautiful goes with it, and we have lost an essential way of bringing ourselves into touch with
our own values and those of the community or civilisation in which we live. As Christopher
Alexamder wrotes inThe Timeless Way of Building (1979):"There is one timeless way of
building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great
traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at
home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. …
this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in
their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are."

It is very rare that a Modernist architect will even use the word "beauty", for, when the
criteria for assessment of quality are metaphysical, a word that evokes the human senses and
individual appreciation is hardly appropriate. The vocabulary is rather that of "innovative",
"cutting edge", "iconic" - words that distance us from our natural instinctive reaction to our
environment. In relation to this, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the whole
training of architects in our time is a training of how not to use our eyes, how not to be
sensitive to beauty, in order to be able to focus absolutely on the importance of abstract
concepts. And this must be the source of the split between non-architects and architects.
The former use their eyes. The latter have been trained to be visually blind, as a glance at the
buildings that are paraded as having merit in the architectural journals will confirm. The
result of abandoning beauty in art and architecture is the same as the result of abandoning
morality in politics and philosophy – inhumanity. And surely again the twentieth century
achieved inhumanity in architecture and built environments that surpassed absolutely
anything that had ever been seen before.
Of course, architects will always try to duck this accusation by saying that the Modernists
principles have not been applied well enough yet and let us give them another go. Next time
we will make Modernism work. This is exactly the argument that Marxists used to justify
further social experiments and the creation of new factions of political parties. Ideologies are
like that. They give the adherents no room for manoeuvre that would enable them to see
that the base premise is fallacious. Gnosticism in all its forms gives its adherents no fear of
the moral and aesthetic void.

vi. Backwards to a New Towards

The longest and broadest perspective on practically anything must be the truest. We know
this from the story our own lives in that the more we become detached from an experience
the more we see it accurately for what it is and what it means. And with historical events,
the more time draws out, the more easily we can evaluate them and judge their importance.
For this reason I have tried albeit it briefly in a short essay to stand back from Modernism and
place it within its intellectual, artistic and historical context. I believe this approach can show
it for what it really is and expose more acutely its failings.

Is the foregoing judgement on Modernism too harsh? Possibly, but the apologists of
Modernism at the present time give no quarter to those who would wish to question its
assumptions and Modern architecture is still invading our towns and cities and despoiling
them and we all know of examples of this happening on our own doorstep. However, there
may be traditionalists who feel it is unseemly to take on Modernism and that we should
simply plough our own furrow.

Traditionalists should take heart from the fact that, although Modernism and the other
"–ism's" which have been dominant in their particular fields in the twentieth century, there
are plenty of areas where metaphysical dogmas have not encroached. The influence of the
Counter-Enlightenment came to predominance above all in the elitist arts and it is perhaps in
the popular arts that the true creative imagination of the twentieth century may lie. Most
people today I would imagine enjoy being surrounded by twentieth century fashion, popular
music, jazz and cinema and react to them in quite a different light from twentieth century
architecture. The popular arts thanks to their spontaneity and commercialism have
remained mercifully metaphysics free zones. And the enormous contrast between the elitist
and popular arts demonstrates, if it be necessary, the nonsense of the idea of a twentieth
century zeitgeist. Also true science and technology must sure rank as primary and lasting
twentieth century achievements.

As we move away from the last century it is time to get rid of the idea that modernism is a
forward-looking, progressive movement. It is a reactionary movement, as any broad
perspective view of the history of ideas shows. It is time to get rid of the idea that modernism
can be aligned with openness and freedom. Its gnostic heart is an affront to the popular,
democratic age in which we live. It is time to get rid of the idea that modernism is dynamic
and able to deliver wealth and prosperity. Its impoverished abstract vocabulary is an
impediment to a rich environment and a quality of life for all. Its dysfunctional buildings
demean our working and our leisure environments and insult our sensibilities.

The only really exciting future lies with the new traditionalism, and the associated new
humanism, with its great store of human history and imagination waiting to be unleashed.
Modernists tried to confine us to the dustbin of history. But the bin was never collected. It
only waits to be seen the many marvels still waiting be rediscovered inside.

Peter Kellow
© March 2006
Peter Kellow
15 place Le Flô
29260 Lesneven
Finistère
France
Tel: +33 02 9830 7120
Email: [email protected]
Web: Peter Kellow
Member, Art Workers Guild www.artworkersguild.org
Member, Traditional Architects Group at RIBA
General Member, INTBAU
Views expressed on this page are those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by those involved in
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