Time for Architecture
Time for Architecture:
On Modernity, Memory
and Time in Architecture
and Urban Design
By
Robert Adam
Time for Architecture: On Modernity, Memory and
Time in Architecture and Urban Design
By Robert Adam
This book first published 2020
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2020 by Robert Adam
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-4597-0
ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-4597-7
For Sarah
without whose support
none of this would have been possible
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ................................................................... xi
Foreword .................................................................................. 1
Time, Architecture and Urban Design
I ................................................................................................ 6
Timeless
1. Timeless Architecture ......................................................... 6
2. Timelessness in Anthropology and Religion.................... 10
3. Timeless Architecture and Religion ................................. 14
4. Proportion and Religion .................................................... 16
5. Proportion and Metaphysics in Architecture ................... 19
6. The Golden Section .......................................................... 24
7. Tradition and the Integration of Time .............................. 32
8. Modernism and the Science of Timelessness ................ 35
9. Presentism and Modernity ............................................... 41
10. From Timeless to Time ..................................................... 44
Endnotes ................................................................................... 45
II ..............................................................................................50
Recognising Time
1. Time, Space and Architecture .......................................... 50
2. Cosmology, Physics and Time .......................................... 54
3. Time and Experience ........................................................ 58
4. Perceiving Time................................................................. 61
5. Perceiving Now ................................................................. 64
6. Now and the Future .......................................................... 71
7. Architecture and the Future ............................................. 73
8. Anticipation and Surprise ................................................. 79
9. Architecture, Science Fiction and the Future.................. 84
10. The Future becomes the Past ........................................... 89
Endnotes ................................................................................... 91
viii Contents
III .............................................................................................97
How Things Change
1. Everything Changes .......................................................... 97
2. How Time Changes ........................................................... 99
3. Change, Economics and Innovation .............................. 102
4. Architecture and Innovation ........................................... 105
5. Post-Modernism, a Case Study in Change .................... 108
The Rise and Fall of the Style ................................... 108
The Post-Modern Rise and Fall in Context ............... 111
6. Variable Rates of Change and their Consequences ..... 115
7. M. R. G. Conzen and Variable Urban Change ............... 122
8. Urban Change and Architecture .................................... 129
9. The Importance of Building Life ..................................... 130
10. Variation in Building Life and Sustainability ................. 134
11. From Change to Modernity............................................. 143
Endnotes ................................................................................. 143
IV.......................................................................................... 148
Modernity
1. The Significance of Modernity in Contemporary
Architecture ...........................................................................148
2. The Nature of Modernity ................................................ 151
3. The History of Modernity ................................................ 156
Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance .... 156
The Enlightenment .................................................... 157
Politics, Science and the Arts in the
Nineteenth Century ..................................................160
The Twentieth Century .............................................. 166
4. Meanings of Modernity................................................... 167
Simple Modernity....................................................... 167
Ordinary Modernity .................................................... 170
Modernism ................................................................. 173
Modernism and the Past ........................................... 178
Predictive and Future Modernity .............................. 182
Modernity as the Past ............................................... 188
The Lexicology of Modernity...................................... 192
5. Positive and Negative Perceptions of Modernity .......... 193
Positive ....................................................................... 195
Time for Architecture ix
Negative ..................................................................... 195
Perceptions of Different Modernities ....................... 199
6. The Geography of Modernity .......................................... 200
7. Understanding Modernity ............................................... 206
Endnotes ................................................................................. 209
V........................................................................................... 218
Memory
1. Memory is All We Have ................................................... 218
2. Architecture and Memory ............................................... 219
3. Architecture as the Memory of Others .......................... 226
4. Modernism, Forgetting and Remembering: Post-War
Germany, a Case Study .................................................. 230
5. Selective Remembering, History and
Building Preservation .........................................................234
6. Destroying Buildings as Culture ..................................... 236
7. The Significance of Destruction and Reconstruction ... 241
8. Memory and History ....................................................... 247
9. Reconstruction and Authenticity.................................... 248
10. Memory and Authenticity ............................................... 250
10. The Fallibility of History .................................................. 254
11. Heritage and Community ............................................... 255
12. Community and Collective Memory ............................... 261
13. The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity ....................... 269
14. Tradition and Custom ..................................................... 271
15. Case Studies of Tradition and Culture .......................... 275
Archaeology ................................................................ 275
Primatology ................................................................ 278
The Cultural Memory of the Group ........................... 282
16. Dual Inheritance Theory ................................................. 282
17. Tradition and Group Identity .......................................... 286
18. Reconsidering Enlightenment Attitudes to Tradition .... 294
19. Tradition in a Modern Context ....................................... 296
20. Whose Tradition? Tradition in Architecture
and Urban Design .................................................................314
Endnotes ................................................................................. 323
x Contents
Afterword ............................................................................ 335
Index.................................................................................... 341
ILLUSTRATIONS
I Timeless
1. Denver Public Library, Michael Graves, 1990
Creative Commons, photo David Basulto
2. Porta Fira Hotel, Barcelona. Toyo Ito, 2010.
Creative Commons, photo Zarateman
3. The Egyptian god Anubis weighing the heart of the deceased.
4. The ideal Gothic city, Augustus Welby Pugin, 1813.
5. The Platonic solids.
6. The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, 1490.
7. Plan of the choir of St Denis, France, 1144
8. The five classical Orders, Sebastiano Serlio, 1537–75.
9. The setting out of Golden Rectangle (a) and spiral (b) from Golden
Rectangle.
10. Modulor Man from Le Corbusier, based on the Golden Rectangle.
Creative Commons, image Malo Thor
11. Golden Section and 3:5 rectangle compared.
12. Illustration of the Parthenon by Adolf Zeising, 1854.
13. Chiesa del Santo Sepolcro, Pisa twelfth century.
Creative Commons, photo Luca Aless
14. Renault Centre, Swindon, England, Norman Foster, 982.
Creative Commons, photo Brian Robert Marshall
15. 15. Moorcrag, Windermere, Cumbria , England, C.F.A Voysey,
1899
16. Cherrylands, Wentworth, England, Oliver Hill, 1935
17. Ray and Maria Stata Center, Cambridge, MAS, Peter Eisenman,
2004.
Creative Commons, Gnu Licence, photo Finlay McWalter
II Recognising Time
1. Construction site.
Creative Commons, photo Kleon3
2. Representation of the universe.
Creative Commons, NASA image
xii Illustrations
3. Street view Bruges.
Photo author
4. New development in Bruges, Belgium.
Photo author
5. Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort, 2012, MAD Architects.
Creative Commons, MAD Architects
6. Therme Vals Graubünden canton, Switzerland, Peter Zumthor,
1996 Creative Commons, photo p2cl
7. Sant Andrea, Mantua. Leon Battista Alberti.
Creative Commons, photo Paulo Monti
8. Marc Chagall, ‘To My Betrothed’, 1911.
Creative Commons, Philadelphia Museum of Art
9. Peter Eisenman, House VI, Cornwall, Connecticut, 1975.
Creative Commons, photo C. G. Hughes
10. Denis Lasdun, Royal College of Physicians, London, 1964.
Creative Commons, Paul the Archivist
11. Bjarke Ingels, Serpentine Pavilion, London, 2016.
Creative Commons, photo Images George Rex
12. H. G. Wells, Time Machine illustration, 1927.
13. Passage of time and introduction of new things, diagram.
III How Things Change
1. Metropol Parasol, Seville, 2011, Jürgen Mayer.
Photo author
2. Mechanical clock.
3. The Kondratieff Cycle, Juglar Cycle and Kitchin Cycle compared.
4. Everett Rogers’ bell curve describing the ‘innovativeness
dimension’.
5. 33 Vestry Street, New York City, 2008, Winka Dubbeldam.
Photo Brian Stanley
6. Post-Modernism charted on Everett Roger’s bell curve.
7. The rise, peak and fall of Gothic Revival.
8. The Post-Modern bell curve, political events and key age cohorts
correlated.
9. Skirmish Near Creen Creek, Queensland, Australia, nineteenth
century print
10. Downs’ and Nunes’ shark fin curve with Roger’s bell curve.
11. Alnwick, Northumberland, England.
Creative Commons, Geograph, photo Graham Horn (cropped)
12. Old map of Chester, England.
13. Penn Station, New York, built in 1910 and demolished in 1963.
Time for Architecture xiii
14. The Centre Pompidou, Paris, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano,
1977.
Photo author
15. Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham, England.
Creative Commons, Geograph, photo Phil Champion
16. Stewart Brand’s diagram of layers of buildings based on longevity.
17. Georgian buildings in Dundonald Street, Edinburgh.
Creative Commons, Geograph, photo M. J. Richardson
IV Modernity
1. Tugendhat House, Brno, Czech Republic, Mies van der Rohe, 930.
2. Zlatý Anděl, Prague, Jean Nouvel, 2001.
Creative Commons, photo Honza Groh
3. The specious present, diagram.
4. Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence, Italy, Brunelleschi, started
1419.
Creative Commons, photo David McSpadden
5. National Library Project, Étienne-Louis Boulée, 1785.
6. Architectural fantasy, 1933, Iacov Chernikhov.
7. Hôtel du Collectionneur, Paris, Pierre Patout, 1925.
8. Baker House, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alvar Aalto, 948
Creative Commons, photo Dadero
9. New House, Hampshire, England, George Saumarez Smith, 2008.
10. Ordinary Modernity, diagram.
11. Suburb.
Photo author
12. Modernism, diagram.
13. Housing, Camden, London, Nicholas Grimshaw, 1988
Creative Commons, photo Junstinc
14. Seattle Public Library, Seattle, USA, Rem Koolhaas, 2004.
Creative Commons, photo Joe Wolf
15. Project, Antonio Sant’Elia, 1914.
16. Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Lyon, France, Le Corbusier, 960
Creative Commons, photo Esther Westerveld
17. Romanian Architects’ Union Building, Bucharest,Romania, Marin
and Bogdnescu, 2007.
Creative Commons, photo Yelkrokoyade
18. Futurism, diagram.
19. Monsanto House of the Future, Disneyland, California, USA, 1957.
Creative Commons, Orange County Archives
xiv Illustrations
20. Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, USA, Daniel Libeskind,
2006.
Creative Commons, Denver Art Museum, photo Ray Tsang
21. Portland Building, Portland, Oregon, USA, Michael Graves, 982.
Creative Commons, photo Steve Morgan
22. Pena Palace, Sintra, Portugal, von Eschwege and Pires, started
1836.
Creative Commons, photo CEphoto, Uwe Aranas
23. India Gate, New Delhi, India, Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1931.
Photo author
24. IFS Tower T1, Changsha, China, Wong Tung & Partners, 2017.
Creative Commons, photo Yinsanhen
V Memory
1. Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal, Rem Koolhaass OMA, 2005.
Photo author.
2. Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, England, Daniel
Libeskind, 2002.
Creative Commons, photo Graham C99
3. Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, Kazakhstan, Foster and
Partners, 2006.
Creative Commons, photo Ninaras
4. Casa del Fascio (now Palazzon Terragni), Como, Giuseppe
Terragni, 1932.
5. Basilique Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile d'Albi, Albi, France, begun in
1282.
Creative Commons, photo byacC
6. Ehrentempel, Munich, Paul Ludwig Troost, 1935.
7. Weißenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, Germany, Mies van der Rohe, Le
Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Bruno Taut, Hans Scharoun and others,
1927.
8. Hampi, part of the city of Vijayanagara in India, destroyed in 1565
CE.
Creative Commons, photo YashiWong
9. The Mostar Bridge reconstructed.
Creative Commons, photo Alistair young
10. The Twin Towers, Manhattan, Yamasaki, and Roth, 1974,
destroyed 2001.
11. The old city of Warsaw reconstructed following Second World War.
Creative Commons, photo Adrian Grycuk
12. Colonial Williamsburg, from 1927 to the present.
Photo author.
Time for Architecture xv
13. Bamiyan Buddhas, Afghanistan, 6th century CE. Destroyed 2001.
Old print.
14. The Arch of Titus, Rome, 81 CE, (a) before and (b) after
reconstruction 1821.
15. Ypres Cloth Hall, Ypres, Belgium, completed 1304 CE, destroyed
1914-18, reconstructed 1933 to 1967.
16. Birmingham Central Library, England, by John Madin, completed
1973.
Creative Commons, photo tedandjen
17. The Palio, Sienna, Italy. Creative Commons, photo Siennanews
18. Berlin Central Station, Gmp Architekten, opened 2006.
Creative Commons, photo Pine
19. Houses at Genesta Road, London, Berthold Lubetkin, completed
1934.
Creative Commons, photo BornHard74
20. Vernacular Architecture, Somerset, England.
Photo author
21. Linearbankkeramik, found for 1,500 years from 5,500 BCE in
Europe.
Creative Commons, photo Wolfgang Sauber
22. Kanyawara chimpanzees group extracting honey.
Creative Commons, Frontiers in Psychology
23. Neolithic cave painting, Western Desert, Egypt.
Creative Commons, photo Clemens Schmillen
24. Pendentive or squinch, Hosios Loukas Katholikon, Greece, 10th
century CE.
Creative Commons, photo WillYs Fotowerkstatt
25. Sir Angus Clifford, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, UK, 1832-7.
26. Peacock’s tail.
Creative Commons, photo Stuart Seeger
27. Fiesta of San Firmín, Pamplona, Spain, the Chupinazo.
Creative Commons, photo www.viajar24h.com
28. Tartan Army (Scottish football supporters) at the Arc de Triomphe,
Paris.
29. Róbert Ragnar Spanó, Judge in the European Court of Human
Rights.
Creative Commons, photo Siberlibrarian
30. Fun Palace, proposed theatre workshop, London, Cedric Price,
1964.
Creative Commons, Fosco Lucarelli, Mariabruna Fabrizi, Microcities
31. Tolpuddle Festival, Tolpuddle, Dorset, England.
Creative Commons, photo Andrew Skudder
xvi Illustrations
32. French Republican Guard, Bastille Day, Paris.
Creative Commons, photo Marie-Lan Nguyen
33. Early typewriter.
34. Hindu temple in a suburb of Nottingham, in the English Midlands.
Photo author.
35. The Haughwout Building, Broadway, New York City.
Creative Commons, photo Kenenth C. Zirkel
36. Bach with Two Roofs, Irving Smith Architects, Golden Bay in New
Zealand, 2017.
Courtesy of Irving Smith Architects, photo Patrick Reynolds
37. Facsimile of German Pavilion, at 1929 International Exposition,
Barcelona, by Mies van der Rohe.
Creative Commons, photo Russ McGinn (cropped)
38. New district of Eemnes Zuidpolder in the Netherlands, from
2013.
Courtesy of Peter Verschuren
FOREWORD
TIME, ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN
We are born and we die. The passage from birth to death
moves us through stages in life that take us unavoidably to
our demise.
This fact lies at the core of our existence and our
awareness of it is the foundation of our understanding of
time. We see time in our everyday experience. All life
shares our mortality, some for less time and some for
more. We experience events that reliably repeat themselves:
the sun marks out the days, the moon the months and the
seasons the years. Light and darkness determine our
activity. Seasons and tides have guided us as hunters,
farmers and seafarers. Time regulates our lives, from the
cosmos to the cells in our bodies.
Our journey through our surroundings takes place in time.
Where we start will be in the past and where we are going
will be in the future. As we move forward, we look back for
guidance to past events. Our judgements are founded on
the understanding that every event or movement has a
cause that precedes it. From this we predict the likely
outcome of changes in our surroundings and decide what
our future actions should be.
Although it is in the essence of our being and
understanding, time cannot be grasped independently of
its effects. It can be seen only when something changes or
2 Foreword
moves. And the pace of change can vary: lightning can
strike in an instant; crops grow in a season and trees in
decades; landscape changes almost imperceptibly;
heavenly bodies move across the sky but seem never to
change. Civilisation has brought us the means of managing
these variations by dividing time into equal measurable
parts: from the hour, to the minute, to the second and
eventually to a unit of Planck Time (the speed of light
across a Planck length - about 10−20 times the diameter of
a proton).
However we divide it, the arrow of our time on earth flies in
only one direction. Our lifetime may be finite, but our vision
of the world is not. We know that the lives of our ancestors
have come before us and we live with their inheritance.
Our descendants will take our memory beyond our death,
but still we seek immortality in deeds and religion. As the
future becomes the past and relentlessly takes us to our
grave, that knowledge leads us to the denial of time. In our
imaginations, and fearful of the finality of death, we have
created places without time where some hope that a
spiritual essence of ourselves may live forever.
Science has taken us to measurements of space and time
beyond anything we can experience and has led us to
question time itself. As Albert Einstein demonstrated that
time is relative to the speed and location of the observer, it
followed that our present can be someone else’s future and
another’s past. Perhaps then time has no direction, only
relationships between different moments. As we theorise on
the origin of the universe we come to a moment, the
singularity, when not only the universe but all laws of
physics, including time, seem to have come into existence.
Time, Architecture and Urban Design 3
**********
Buildings are created, decay and eventually perish. Villages,
towns and cities are founded, flourish, decline and
sometime will disappear. This same mortal passage defines
all life and perhaps all things in the universe. It lies at the
centre, not only of biology, but also physics. As it is the fate
of all human beings, it shapes our perception of life and the
organisation of society and becomes a primary subject of
philosophy, anthropology and sociology. Architecture and
urban design not only share their mortality with the rest of
the universe, they serve societies that are shaped by their
understanding of time. A better understanding of the impact
of time on architecture and urban design can be achieved
with an understanding of time as revealed in science, ideas
and social behaviour.
In contemporary architecture, a vision of the future lies at the
centre of design theory. An ideal future is put forward that
turns away from our past and gives us our concept of
modernity. At its heart, this is a proposition for the adoption of
a particular intellectual and social relationship between the
past, present and future and so is a theory of how we should
behave in relation to the passage of time. This idea of
modernity is only one aspect of our experience of the present,
how it is informed by the past and where it will take us in the
future. This is such a fundamental feature of our negotiation
with our surroundings that it has been widely explored in
philosophy, sociology and anthropology, all of which can
enrich our understanding and response to modernity.
As the future is only ever speculation, it must be based on
our experience of the past. The past no longer exists, except
as personal memory or the survival of past objects and
practices. The buildings and places we experience,
4 Foreword
individually and as a community, are physical reminders of
the past and our understanding of them creates memories
that are both personal and shared. These shared memories
are how a community collectively identifies with a particular
place. The design of new buildings and places affects this
identity and affects how a community takes its past into the
future. The way we remember, and the relationship between
memory and identity, have widespread implications and are
the subject of sociological, anthropological and perceptual
analysis. These studies can help us manage the relationship
between new buildings and existing places and respond to
the memories and identities of those who will live with them.
As buildings and towns come into existence, change and
pass away, we can measure the passage from creation to
extinction with hours, years and centuries. As places
change with the passage of time they do not do so at the
same rate or evenly. Parts of buildings and places change
rapidly and others survive for long periods of time. Seen as
the measure of change, time moves at different speeds
with different phenomena. This is well-recognised in geology
and biology and has now been identified as a feature of
historical change. Urban geographers see variable change
as an essential part of the urban condition and more
recently it has been recognised as a key aspect of
sustainability. We see long-lasting phenomena in a different
light to ephemeral events and an understanding of the
unevenness of time and how it affects the ways we use and
understand buildings and places can make design more
relevant, flexible and enduring.
Most architects and urban designers understand that
movement through a place takes time and is a progressive
experience. As people enter and pass through a building or
place, they will see their surroundings in a sequence and
Time, Architecture and Urban Design 5
that will be part of the way the place is designed. As this is
repeated time after time, the perception of the place will
change. It will change from newness to familiarity, and
possibly from enthusiasm to apathy and even to dislike.
This change in the way an identical object is regarded can
take place over years or generations. While some things
that go out of fashion are simply discarded, buildings and
places often survive long after enthusiasm for them fades.
Time changes our use and understanding of the things
around us.
The way a building or place can, without any significant
physical change, move from being admired to being
despised is often so disconcerting to designers that it
barely impinges on how they make these places. It is as if
our buildings and places spring into an eternal present
where decay, transformation and decline are banished in
favour of a perpetually benign future. In common with the
reassuring imagination of places where our souls can
reside forever, there are propositions that some principles
of design and beauty are perpetual and timeless. These
share a very wide range of theories of the unreality of time
from philosophy and cosmology to anthropology and myth.
Before any discussion of how to manage time in relation to
the design of buildings and places can proceed, the first
task must be to examine the idea that their design can be,
in any respect, free from time itself.
I
TIMELESS
… it is remarkable that mortals, once they had developed
a passion for nobler things, grew concerned to construct
buildings that would be permanent, and as far as possible
immortal.
Leon Battista Alberti,
On the Art of Building in Ten Books, 14501
1. Timeless Architecture
The idea that architecture can be timeless has a
widespread appeal. There are several books that present
architecture and urban design as potentially timeless
phenomena. Timelessness, as something that overcomes
the transience of time, suggests the kind of permanence
implied by the repetition of historic themes in traditional
and classical architecture. This is clearly articulated in the
title of the book, Traditional Architecture: Timeless Building
for the Twenty-First Century.2 The publication, Timeless
Architecture, also charts the first ten years of the Driehaus
Prize, which is awarded for ‘traditional, classical and
sustainable architecture and urbanism’.3 Christopher
Alexander’s influential book, The Timeless Way of Building,
in print since 1980,4 is a hymn to a romantic ideal of
traditional architecture and urban design.
From a quite different standpoint, winners of the Pritzker
Prize, which has a record of giving awards to radical
designers, are consistently described as timeless: in 2009,
Timeless 7
Peter Zumthor’s buildings were said to ‘have a strong,
timeless presence’;5 in 2012, Wang Shu is described in his
citation as ‘producing an architecture that is timeless’;6 in
2013, Toyo Ito is called ‘a creator of timeless buildings’.7 In
the USA there is even a ‘Timeless Architecture Award’ given
by the American Institute of Architects, although only to
members from Pittsburgh.8
1. Denver Public Library, Michael Graves, 1990. Built by one of the
winners of the Driehaus Prize whose work is described as timeless.
8 I
2. Porta Fira Hotel, Barcelona. Toyo Ito, 2010. Built by one of the winners
of the Pritzker Prize described as ‘a creator of timeless buildings’.
Timeless 9
Architectural practices often simply claim that their work is
timeless. There is a practice called ‘Timeless Architecture’
in California9 and another in Massachusetts,10 and there is
an ‘Estudio Atemporal’ in Mexico City.11 ‘Timeless’ can also
be expressed as a subtitle to the firm’s name: Ascot Design
in the UK describes its work as ‘timeless architecture’;12
the Belgian practice ‘Architecture Responsible’ refers
to its designs as ‘Une architecture intemporelle’;13 and
‘Architekturbüro Hornstein’ in Nuremburg presents its work
as ‘Zeitlose Architektur’.14
The suggestion of a lack of change over time does not sit
easily with some architects concerned with overt modernity,
but the appeal of timelessness remains strong nonetheless.
These architects sometimes try to resolve this by resorting to
an apparent contradiction in terms, linking modernity or
innovation with timelessness. The British firm, MacCreanor
Lavington, claims to ‘make architecture that is both
contemporary and timeless’;15 on the website of the Hamburg
practice, Mollwitz Massivbau GmbH, its architecture is labelled
as ‘Zukunftsweisend und zeitlos’ (trendsetting and timeless);16
and Estudio Carbajal, from Seville, say that ‘perseguimos una
arquitectura contemporánea … una arquitectura atemporal’
(we pursue a contemporary architecture … a timeless
architecture).17 The Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels, tells us
that, ‘the only way to be timeless is to be of your time’.18 The
star architect, Frank Gehry, seeming to recognise the
contradiction while maintaining an aspiration for
timelessness, stated that ‘architecture should speak of its
time and place, but yearn for timelessness’.19 An e-architect
discussion by Roland Wahlroos-Ritter,20 gives a typical
resolution to the problem, drawing together all sides by
reducing the issue to one abstract feature: ‘associated with
Classicism as well as Modernism, white has the allure of
timelessness.’ (my emphasis).
10 I
The desire to, in some way, stand aside from the physically
and culturally destructive passage of time is clearly
powerful. The microbiologist and philosopher, Darryl Reanny,
saw this as a prime motivating force for creativity. ‘From this
yearning for forever, this aching sense of passing time,
springs most of humanity's greatest achievements in art,
music, literature and science. Paradoxically, it is the very
awareness that life is fleeting on the wings of time that
directs human activity towards the creation of artefacts that
possess the durability their creators’ lack, images in carved
stone and marble, words written in books, beauty woven
from sound, ideas captured on film. Most of civilisation is a
by-product of the quest for immortality.’21 The German
philosopher and commentator on architecture, Karsten
Harries, identifies this urge in architecture in his paper,
‘Building and the Terror of Time’, saying that, ‘Architecture is
… a deep defence against the terror of time. The language of
beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality.’22
This terror of time - of decay, mortality and oblivion - is a
fundamental neurosis in the human condition on which is
built religion and myth. As the designers of long-lasting
structures, it is not surprising that architects seek to find
ways to overcome this phobia with their work.
If architects are pursuing a piece of the same timelessness
as religion and myth, can these help us to understand or
advance the architectural objective?
2. Timelessness in Anthropology and Religion
A window to our earliest perception of time may be found in
the studies of tribal societies. The French anthropologist,
Claude Levi-Strauss, observed that rituals make ancestors
a present reality and that myths are ‘machines for the
Timeless 11
suppression of time’23. The British anthropologist, Sir
Edward Evans-Pritchard, in his study of the southern
Sudanese Nuer, notes that, ‘the distance between the
beginning of the world and the present day remains
unalterable. Time is thus not a continuum but a constant
structural relationship between two points.’ Aboriginal
tribes in Australia see in the landscape, and the ritual
objects found there, the constant presence of their
ancestors; the past and present live side by side.24 The
New Zealand Maori describe the past as ‘the time in front
of us’.25 We should not assume that these views of time
are a deliberate attempt to overcome chronological time;
our modern sense of time was simply absent. Members of
some Amazonian tribes do not count beyond ten and have
no knowledge of their age. When converted to Christianity,
the Arctic Circle Inuit were perplexed by the need to count
days in order to observe the Sabbath.26
Marking out the repetition of ritual can be joined with the
everyday experience of cyclical time. Solar, lunar and
celestial cycles, tides, seasons and the migration of herds
reliably repeat themselves. The beginning and end of these
cycles are locked into a perpetual repetition that links the
present with an endless series of past events. Cycles could
be seen to sit within other cycles: the solar with the
seasonal; the tidal with the lunar. As societies became
more complex, new cycles were added to those that had
been observed. The Mayan civilisation had a series that
stretched to 63,081,429 years. Hindus also believe in
interlocking cycles, the longest of more than eight trillion
years and the smallest of 4,320,000 years. Greek and
Roman Stoic philosophers saw history as an ever-repeating
series of ages, each of which ended in conflagration and a
new beginning. For the Stoics, God was an eternal presence
above this perpetual duplication of history. For Hindus and
12 I
Buddhists, eternity was the release of the soul from this
endless repetition and entry into a state of timelessness.
In ancient Greek mythology, the soul was immortal and on
death went to the underworld or Hades, which had its own
pantheon of gods and a complex hierarchy. Greek
philosophers went beyond the traditional pantheon of gods
and for Plato there was ‘the Father that … set about
making this Universe, … an eternal image, moving
according to number, even that which we have named
Time.’27 Aristotle believed that, in a universe characterised
by movement, there must be a supreme God who is the
eternal unmoved mover. 28 Religion in ancient Egypt was
founded on preparation for life after death and the belief
that the soul would be judged by the god Anubis and, if it
had been virtuous, would share ‘an everlasting heaven’
with the combined gods, Osiris and Ra. The Judaic tradition
had a solitary creator-God but he was made into a paternal
figure that watched over the Jewish people and judged
souls for entry to a timeless afterlife, be it heaven or hell:
‘Multitudes who sleep in the dust of earth will awake: some
to everlasting life, others to everlasting contempt.’29 This
tradition was passed down to Christianity: ‘And this is the
eternal life, they that know the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom you have sent.’30 Muslims share the vision of a
single God and an eternal afterlife in Jannah: ‘gardens, with
rivers flowing beneath,’31 which is reserved for, ‘those who
have faith and work righteousness, they are companions of
the garden. Therein shall they abide forever.’32
Timeless 13
3. The Egyptian god Anubis weighing the heart of the deceased for
admission to heaven. Many religions promise a life after death free
from the corruption of time.
Most organised religions share the promise of a life beyond
that of mortal existence in a place or condition that is
eternal, free of time and its path to decay, degeneration
and death. This is part of the recent and, for some, the
contemporary culture of modern societies. Any reference to
timelessness, as a contrary to more prosaic qualities such
as ‘endurance’, ‘longevity’ or ‘permanence’, will make,
deliberately or inadvertently, some allusion to the
metaphysical concept of a place or condition where time no
longer exists.
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3. Timeless Architecture and Religion
In most modern western societies, religion is predominantly
a matter of personal faith and is rarely used as stand-alone
justification in debate on practical matters. And yet, as we
have seen, timelessness, a supernatural concept, is
consistently cited as an architectural objective.
4. The ideal Gothic city, illustrated by Augustus Welby Pugin in Contrasts
Or, A Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages and
Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day, 1836. Pugin saw Gothic
Architecture as perfect and incapable of improvement.
In the past, the connection was made between divine
timelessness and architecture. In the twelfth century,
Abbot Suger of St Denis, considered to be the first patron
of Gothic architecture, would describe those who engaged
in the project as, ‘focusing the undivided vision of their
mind upon the hope of eternal reward, they zealously seek
only that which is eternal.’33 In the late fifteenth century,
Pope Sixtus IV, patron of the early Renaissance in Rome,
