A Plank in the Eye
How Mainstream Architecture Built an Ugly World
There it was, in the middle of the then-influential magazine Progressive Architecture, a strange article from a strange man. The article—titled “Perspectives: Manifesto 1991”— nailed a thesis for change to the Wittenburg door of the dominant mainstream theory in architecture. The strange man, Christopher Alexander, was an Austrian born British-American architect, writer, design theorist, mathematician, contractor and Architecture Professor at the University of California-Berkley. Among a small group of architects, Alexander had developed a cult following with his 1977 book A Pattern Language: Town, Buildings, Construction. Simply said, A Pattern Language was observations of the “patterns” of what seems to be true, good and beautiful in the things built around us. Having laid the groundwork in his writings, Alexander took on the avant garde academy, famously debating postmodern architect Peter Eisenman at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Speaking to Eisenman’s post modernism Alexander says “I find that incomprehensible. I find it irresponsible. I find it nutty. I feel sorry for the man. I also feel incredibly angry because he is %#@&ing up the world.” Now, in the manifesto Alexander directly confronts the now dominant mainstream theory of post modernism that “has not produced buildings that ordinary people like. On the contrary, it has mainly produced buildings that people see as ugly and unsuitable.”
Some words find us at just the right place in just the right time, and Alexander’s settled in my then-young architect mind as something profound and life-altering. The kind of words that change the way you look at the world and your work forever. I knew it in my gut. I had seen it. I had heard it. I had felt it. I’d just returned from a yearlong self-guided tour of Europe where I’d experienced the Western world’s greatest cities. Eating and drinking in courtyards which live. Engulfed in spaces bathed with natural light. Surprised by hidden gardens and passageways. Experiencing in so real a sense the very things Alexander contended modern architecture now lacked. Returning with a markedly different perspective, I soon left the large firm where I’d worked for the decade prior, along with my other partners, to found our own design practice. Alexander’s words go with me, reminding me daily to consider architecture with the poetic prose of John Ruskin:
“The only prospect which is really desirable or delightful, is that from the window of the breakfast-room […] where we meet the first light of the dewy day, the first breath of the morning air, the first glance of gentle eyes; to which we descend in the very spring and elasticity of mental renovation and bodily energy, in the gathering up of our spirit for the new day, in the flush of our awakening from the darkness and the mystery of faint and inactive dreaming, in the resurrection from our daily grave, in the first tremulous sensation of the beauty of our being, in the most glorious perception of the lightning of our life; there, indeed, our expatiation of spirit, when it meets the pulse of outward sound and joy, the voice of bird and breeze and billow, does demand some power of liberty, some space for its going forth into the morning, some freedom of intercourse with the lovely and limitless energy of creature and creation.”
Every area of our lives is governed by a “dominant mainstream theory.” The dominant mainstream theory for food is the USDA’s food pyramid, dating back to the 1920s. It set the foundation for an industrial food supply chain that at first challenged us to eat more breads and less fat, and now challenges us to eat less breads and more fat. That food system is now being challenged by critics such as Micheal Pollan, in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The dominant theory of education is the public school system. It set the foundation for an industrial public education system, and through the Committee of Ten, standardized learning into eight years of elementary education followed by four years of high school. That factory system is now being challenged by people like John Gatto in his book Weapons of Mass Instruction. Then there is the dominant theory of medicine that makes basic theoretical assumptions about physical and psychological difficulties on a basis of causation and remediation. It set the foundation for an industrial healthcare system dominated by antibiotics and prescription drugs. That system’s miracle moments are challenged by critics like James Le Fanu in his book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine. All of these are examples of dominant mainstream theories that are more and more criticized for their suspect outcomes. In the words of G. K. Chesterton, “What embitters the world is not an excess of criticism, but the absence of self-criticism.” I can assure you that I appreciate flush toilets, penicillin, and the internet. I am not looking to return to the technology of the 1950s or 1750s. However, I am saying there are outcomes to mainstream ideas, and those outcomes have to be considered as we look closely in critiquing our theories, including architecture.
For architecture, the mainstream theory is a concatenation of dominant philosophies of the day objectified in three dimensions. Is truth, beauty, and goodness objective and outside ourselves? There to simply be discovered and then cultivated? Is truth, beauty and goodness subjective and just a feeling to be formed? Or is there no truth, no beauty and no goodness and it’s just what we say it is and construct it to be? In all of these basic philosophical arguments the architecture will speak loudly of what we truly are, at a specific time, place and dimension, over what we simply say we are. A culture of discovered truth searches, builds, perfects and cultivates based solely on this truth. The imago dei. A culture of felt truth builds then re-builds when we “need that loving feeling.” The imago day old. A culture of no truth first destroys all other truth claims, then builds on that truth to establish the imago my own. It is not surprising then that these mainstream theories, made into architecture, might either connect or fail to connect with large groups of people. History tells us that pre-modern thought looked outside itself intent on discovering, imperfectly as it may have been, what it meant to be human. Now modern and post-modern thought resolves itself to re-forming the world and man, in our own making, into our own image. For the modern man it has been the “factoryization” of the human experience. Stamped out in identical “internationalized” parts; flavored with the artificial sweeteners of style, spaced precisely apart according to the factory manual; sanitized, pasteurized, homogenized; the circuit board of connections capturing maximum speed and capacity. Important for delivering the goods, but impotent in connecting the good life. C.S. Lewis lamented in the preface to The Screwtape Letters,
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
For the post-modern man it is the Nietzsche-ization of the world: God is dead. A world without a metanarrative is rudderless, unable to understand what a person is, and therefore can hardly connect, three dimensionally, in time and space, to what brings humanness to humans. If humans are just matter, that by time and chance, at certain temperatures, are machines, evolving by random process to produce art, literature, poetry, music, and architecture, then it’s hardly surprising that a mainstream theory would emerge to reduce the highest attainments of architecture into what Le Corbusier calls “machines for living.” If the dominant mainstream theory of life is “matter doesn’t really matter anyway,” then that means something in time and space. Goethe said, “Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music.” John Lennon’s music said, “Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us, only sky / Imagine all the people living for today.” There you have a dominant mainstream theory made into song: no heaven above a wasteful, sprawling, brownskyed world, no heaven above giving hope and protecting the weak, no heaven above restraining the strong and powerful from producing a hell below. It’s not at all difficult to imagine—it’s right outside your door, and it has three dimensions. It’s in the meaninglessness of the meaningful, the sacredness of the sacredless, and the fruitfulness of the fruitlessness of the places and spaces that form our architecture.
Consequently, the leading mainstream theoreticians, especially of architecture, are profoundly and puritanically critical of the ordinary objective world that Alexander presents. Imagine Peter Eiesman, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhas, and standing amongst Chip and Joanna’s Magnolia Market Silos in Waco, Texas, scoffing at the thousands of people who flock there every day. Unsophisticated. Boobus publicus. (If you don’t know who Chip and Joanna are, you are probably part of the “mainstream theory.”) Yet these evangelists of the mainstream fail to self-criticize the world we live in today as a natural result of their very own philosophy. These theorists are quick to look at a grain of sawdust in the kitschy cuteness of their brother’s eye but fail to see the calculated coldness of the plank in their own.
It’s not surprising at all that it would be a mathematician-turned-architect who would cast doubt on this mainstream theory of architecture. I love mathematicians. Mathematics is the science of patterns. Just watch any TED Talk by a mathematician; they see beauty in patterns. It’s awe-inspiring just to consider the Fibonacci series, a pattern underlying so much of what we see and call beauty. In other words, patterns are not just beautiful but are fundamental to beauty itself. Alexander surmises that the patterns underlying math must also underlie architecture. Not seen in numbers, but empirically observed, across cultures and time, in the dimensions of architecture. Living courtyards. Hiding pathways. Soaring spaces. Dancing streets. Beauty arises as the patterns are present and intertwined. Observed deep in the heart and soul of those who listen to the head, the heart, the eyes, the body, the soul and the spirit. The reductionism of the mainstream theory, in architecture, leaves little room for anything beyond the mechanics and formulas. Matter barely matters, let alone anything called soul or spirit. Yet this is where Alexander and patterns eventually take us. As he says in an essay for First Things:
“It has taken me almost fifty years to understand fully that there is a necessary connection between God and architecture, and that this connection is, in part, empirically verifiable. Further, I have come to the view that the sacredness of the physical world—and the potential of the physical world for sacredness—provides a powerful and surprising path towards understanding the existence of God, whatever God may be, as a necessary part of the reality of the universe. If we approach certain empirical questions about architecture in a proper manner, we will come to see God.”
Patterns take us to a Pattern Maker. Origin. The idiom, “God is in the details…”
Fast forward thirty-four years from 1991, Christopher Alexander has passed away (2022) but his book A Pattern Language remains one of the bestselling architecture books of all time. There have been many projects and people influenced by Alexander. Seaside, Florida. Rosemary Beach, Florida. Alys Beach, Florida. Poundbury, England. King Charles. Steve Jobs. All these people and places, seeing the patterns of the great pillars that hold Durham Cathedral in place. Yet, the seeing is through post-modern glasses. The pillar of the patterns—God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth—who inspired those enormous, actual pillars, is no longer acknowledged in the work. Indeed, the world being quite beautiful but profoundly broken in its ability to see.
G.K. Chesterton quipped “The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.” and “Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough”. We can see the tradition in buildings but as Gustav Mahler said, “Tradition is not the worship of the ashes, but the preservation of the fire.” The “fire” being the right worship of God the Father Almighty, through Jesus Christ His Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. Architecture, like politics, is downstream from culture and culture is downstream from Worship. Alexander ends his 1991 manifesto with this statement:
“The architect acknowledges that all building is essentially a religious process. This does not mean that it is attached to any one particular religion.
It means that the ultimate object of the work of building is to make a gift to God. And that is the ultimate purpose of the work is to reach a level of art in which the inner nature of things—the universe—and God—stand revealed.”
May those with eyes to see, see.
Image: Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands, by Alessandro Mendini with Michele de Lucci, Philippe Starck and Coop Himmelb(l)au (1994). Wikimedia Commons.