The Australian Ugliness (26 page)

The idea, then, may sometimes be no more than an abstraction, a draftsman's diagram which never could be perceived after translation into the various volumes of an actual, usable building.

The degree of impressiveness of the idea ranges from lost abstractions up to the comparatively rare succinct visual image so simple and sharply focused that it is photographed on the brain after one short exposure. Between these extremes architecture has various subtle means of imprinting itself on the perambulating eye. Although a great architectural complex often is not comprehensible from a single viewpoint, an image builds up in the course of time as the observer passes round and through: thus the tenuous connection sometimes made with Einstein's space-time concept. Again, the form may be based on a motive of some intricate regularity or internal geometry producing not visual simplicity but an ordered and clearly directed complexity. Sometimes the form may have no apparent basis in geometry—as in the voluptuous Baroque facade, or Sydney Opera House—and yet still be manifestly controlled by an idea comprehensible to the observer.

Even the simplest container rarely is sufficient in itself without various adjuncts, and openings to admit light, air and people. The additions to or subtractions from the basic form may make new points of emphasis and change the direction; indeed the main ingredient of many designs is subtraction, the effect of hollows, voids, and spaces on elementary forms.

With complicated modern functions the search for a motivating idea grows more difficult. What is required now is a simple interpretation which crystallizes or typifies the complex functions. Without this any form which naively follows function will undoubtedly appear to wander aimlessly, and a combination of forms may be so involved and uncertain that all the artifices of composition, all the desperate beckoning to a centre of interest, cannot endow the whole with a single meaning. The great idea is no more and no less than a suitable discipline to mould gently but firmly all the inert matter of the physical requirements, pointing to a reconciliation of all conflicts in a united presentation of a clear statement.

As the psychologists' theory of gestalt indicates, the unanalytical eye is the busy Featurist-designer's greatest ally. The conscious mind tends to extract a memorably compact, articulate image even from incoherent form combinations. It gravitates gratefully to any feature. The casual observer, like the tourist with a camera viewfinders' eyes, is inclined to ignore any elements not directly relevant to the gestalt, or dominating image, the feature eye-trap set by the architect. The test of the comprehensiveness and value of an idea is not simply the persistence of an image, but the extent to which that image recalls and represents the building or composite of buildings.

Advanced techniques now make it possible to extend the range of ideas in economical forms of structure into the subtler shapes of solid geometry: parabolic arches, the twisted planes known as hyperbolic paraboloids, and complex curves as in the giant funnel of Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl by Yuncken, Freeman, architects.

With each exciting new mathematical form in pre-stressed concrete or tension cables the world gains a confusing but optimistic impression of change, invention and progress. Undoubtedly many more unfamiliar forms lie ahead of the century, but no shape in itself has ever added to the strength or depth of architectural communication. Experiments with structural shapes and expressive shapes fascinate many of the most prominent and imaginative architects and a new shape is often fortunate in its first showing. But novelty's fascination may be delusive. An unexpected shape sometimes gives an effect so startling that the observer is deceived into crediting it with more power than it really possesses over the whole building. The test is whether the shape, new, second-hand, or antique, is in fact the ruling motive of the entire building or whether it has been applied like a feature: a scoop of flavouring to a tasteless pudding. Technological developments assist architectural expression only as they extend the potential range of motives. The great idea seldom is found in a floundering sprint ahead of the engineers by an architect in search of spectacle; it grows from a wide background knowledge of general technical potential and from the specific information which has been gathered on the problem in hand.

If the architect cannot produce a strong formal idea at the beginning the building must plod on to become either an incoherent assortment of practical solutions or coherent in a contrived, noncommittal, stereotyped routine, begging to be enlivened by features. But it takes a really rabid Featurist to demand features on a structure as self-reliant as Melbourne's Music Bowl.

The making of any artistic statement strong and clear is of course not enough if the statement happens to be irrelevant. And when, for instance, an architect has not properly assimilated the programme, or when he is by nature impatient with the details of programmes, it sometimes occurs that he prematurely pounces on a motive which bears little relation to the physical requirements. The crystallization of a theme is usually a point of no return in the process of design, the strong idea bringing with it a compulsion which few architects have the strength to resist. During the developmental stage they may discover that the theme does not suit all the conditions; consequently something must suffer. According to temperament, some architects twist the theme to suit the programme. Others amend the programme to fit the theme; as happened in an extreme way in Wright's spiral Guggenheim museum in New York: a triumphantly non-Featurist building with a motive so strong it appeared to overwhelm even its author. In this case it seems that Wright was never adequately briefed on the gallery requirements. The motive struck him with what must have been sledgehammer force while he was isolated in his desert workshop. There it possessed him. At no time did it permit him to bend to the practical requirements of those who had to run the museum. When he learned their problems later he had to dismiss the problems (‘If the pictures don't fit, cut them in half'). The spiral now ruled everything. One may find other examples of incompatibility between requirements and motive in some self-consciously monumental buildings in Australia. Their obvious functional failure is observed intently by the Featurist, not without a hint of sadistic pleasure. They confirm the Featurist's distrust of firm statements and his adherence to a non-committal basis for all design. They almost give him a touch of intellectual justification to add to the powerful economic argument in favour of Featurism.

But the great idea in architecture is not simply a matter of geometry. When the architect confers an idea on the building project, he experiences a rare phase of his work when he is as free of the worst nagging practical considerations as a sculptor contemplating a block of stone or a painter confronting a clean canvas. If he is moved, if he has the desirable flash of inspiration, something within himself ignites it. This may be the desire for a certain atmospheric quality in the space to be enclosed, or a certain structural bias, or an attitude to the environment of the proposed building. Irrational influences will enter; the moment of conception will be shaded by the architect's own background and mood, by sympathy for a charming site or stimulation by the personality of his client, by religious dedication or good humour or any other private emotional response to the situation set by the programme, the site, the surroundings, the social implications, the entire building problem. And the great idea is also influenced by one's understanding of the nature of architecture.

Through the ages, at least before the arrival of modern technology, circumstances have changed people and their shelters, causing great differences from nation to nation and from region to region in the colour of skin, in language, taste, haircuts, table manners, dress, church services and so on. But underneath all the material and physical differences, underneath social, psychological and taste differences, underneath the cultural veneer of civilization, human nature is always human nature and architectural nature is architectural nature. The ancient question of this nature, the continuing essence of art in the mother art, is the crux of any philosophical discussion of the shape of the man-made world. Now it has to be examined again; for the best counter to Featurism is real architecture, and the only hope for real architecture lies in much wider understanding of its potential. What can architecture do for an occupant that a non-committal building with a nice couple of features can't do? What, in short, is the secret of architecture?

In the course of picking over the world's history for features that would add a moment's titillation to pedestrian structures, Australia built up a smattering of knowledge about architectural styles and a scorn for architectural theory. In the pattern of an active people, happier when doing than when theorising, the Australians most interested in architecture, including even the keener students of architecture, have always inclined towards a concentration on fine detail, craftsmanship and elements of good taste, rather than a puzzling over the reasons for the different basic shapes and forms of building. Nevertheless it was hard to avoid noticing that the revolutionary movement that went under the general heading of Modern Architecture was not in fact a single style but a number of different styles, some of which could be given names: for instance, the ‘Organic' and the ‘International Style'. There is in fact a forest of fashions, mannerisms and misunderstanding within the modern movement, and this is profoundly unsettling to many architects, whose work means nothing if not the attempt to create order. At this time the schools are full of questions. Should a building express its function or its structure? Can it be free to express an emotion? How can one reconcile humanism with mechanization, and which way is architecture to go now that the opposing traditional styles are all vanquished and it has nothing to fight but its own confusion? There is now no agreed basis for argument firmer than taste, and few people are so unwise or unsophisticated as to believe they can always rely on that.

In some periods when most cultivated people shared the ideals of the artists, the ground was ready prepared for the critic. When he made pronouncements his audience understood and appreciated the scale on which he was judging. In any of the golden eras of building the critic, the architect, the patron and the educated public agreed on a code of design. There was room for critical discussion only on interpretation and execution of the code. Today in some other arts a code applies; not in painting or sculpture—the disagreements between schools and individuals and the lack of accepted values often produce chaotic contradictions in the criticism of these arts—but a code applies to some extent in music and literature and to a great extent in the livelier arts. If a drama critic writes that such-and-such a play is unreal, unimaginative and the acting is unconvincing, every newspaper reader gains a fairly precise impression of the evening that lies ahead of him at that theatre. But if the same adjectives are applied to a building—and of course they can be applied without change of meaning—no one is much wiser. The sensitive layman, wanting to know more, seeking experiences parallel with those he has enjoyed in the understanding of other arts, seizes on the word imagination. But immediately he is lost again; between the desert Taliesin of Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the flashier new private bank branches in any progressive Australian town lies practically the total range of architectural sensitivity, creativeness and sincerity; yet there are cultivated and sensitive laymen who can hardly distinguish between the two.

In all periods without a code of artistic behaviour the more thoughtful critics have felt obliged to provide one, hoping to formulate rules which would have universal application and be binding on all, irrespective of emotional incidents and individual tastes. In the Augustan age of Rome Vitruvius first performed this task for architecture. He specified the three essentials: ‘…strength, utility and beauty'. ‘Strength,' he wrote, ‘arises from…making a proper choice of materials without parsimony. Utility arises from a judicious distribution of the parts, so that the purposes be duly answered, and that each have its proper situation. Beauty is produced by the pleasing appearance and good taste of the whole, and by the dimensions of all the parts being duly proportioned to each other.' Sir Henry Wotton, paraphrasing these remarks in 1624, defined the elements of architecture as ‘commodity, firmness and delight'. Sir Henry's definition is still the staple of architectural theory, despite Sir Geoffrey Scott's objection that the three elements are diverse and incommensurable and can furnish no general estimate or true comparison of style. The tripartite definition nevertheless is broad and flexible enough to make a convincing and convenient axiom. It is in fact so broad as to be of no practical value in guiding anyone through the shoals surrounding the few clear landmarks of modern building. For more exact guidance various critics and the more articulate architects have tried to formulate additional axioms and definitions; indeed the insecurity of architecture's position in society is well illustrated by the fact that everyone in the last hundred and fifty years who has essayed a book on architectural theory has felt obliged at some stage to invent a new definition of the art.