NEW ORTHODOXIES:III

ILLITERATE VERNACULAR

Gavin Stamp exposes

the contradictions in Post-Modernist architecture

POST-Modernism may well seem a won- derfully self-contradictory concept. To be Post-Modern can have no meaning except as a response to the peculiar cultural conditions prevailing in the 20th century, for until the ideal of modernity was in- vested with absolute moral values, 'mod- ern' merely meant up-to-date, fashionable. Renaissance writers referred to the Gothic as `moderna' since it had succeeded Roman Classicism, for instance, and when Lord Palmerston dismissed Gilbert Scott's Gothic Revival design for the Foreign Office by saying that he wanted something more like modern architecture', he meant Italianate and was merely expressing a stylistic preference.

But by the fourth decade of this century, modernity ceased to be a matter of inevita- bility and fashion; it became the immut- able, absolute expression of the Zeitgeist of the modern world. Siegfried Giedion, Nikolaus Pevsner, Henry-Russell Hitch- cock and others decreed that the spirit of the age permitted no deviation from the mechanistic, cubist and planar style of White architecture evolved on the Conti- nent in the 1920s. This Modern Movement

succeeded in establishing a half-century- long dominance as orthodoxy, but not even Pevsner's strict condemnation of 'the crav- ing of architects for individual expression' anti 'the craving of the public for the surprising and fantastic' could prevent a reaction. And when the Modern Move- ment was seen to have often catastrophic social and functional failings, the demand of the public for something different and more interesting could no longer be re- sisted. The result was Post-Modernism. The Modern Movement, of course, en- joyed a similar dominance in other fields but, as far as I know, there is not, yet, a distinct Post-Modern music, or sculpture. Architects seem peculiarly attracted by -isms and orthodoxies.

Post-Modernism is, however, a more precise phenomenon, which does not, strictly speaking, embrace those other reactions to Modernism, such as the pedantic Classicism of Quinlan Terry or the brick 'neo-vernacular' which has proved so alarmingly popular since the demise of high-rise public housing. Post- Modernism has become a distinct style with a recognisable vocabulary of motifs; it alludes to the past but tradition is inter- preted with a modern inflection, with a conscious or unconscious illiteracy and, most tiresomely, with irony. The essential distinction, indeed, between Pre- and Post- Modern architecture is that lessons are not properly learned, that historical elements are never used correctly. This is to show that its practitioners are still modern, that is progressive, at heart. Post-Modernism is a whimsical fusion of past and present which could only flourish in the intellectual void left by the collapse of the Modern Movement. Back in 1978, the high priest of Post-Modernism, Charles Jencks, prophe- sied that 'we might see an architecture emerge that is quite similar to the Neo- Queen Anne and Edwardian of eighty years ago'. This has happened; Post- Modernism has become a style which is as eclectic, if not as charming, as the 'Queen Anne' which sprang up after the collapse of the Gothic Revival; I also suspect that it will be as ephemeral.

The origins of Post-Modernism un- doubtedly lie in the writings and buildings of Robert Venturi, the American architect who was recently commissioned to design the National Gallery extension in London. In 1966, Venturi published Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, a highly in- fluential little book, full of illustrations of historical parallels, which contained such apparent heresies as 'I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning . . . . I prefer "both — and" to "either — or", black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white.' In his built architecture of the 1960s, however, Venturi seemed to learn more from American pop culture than from his heroes, Borromini, Hawks- moor or Lutyens; his buildings were still thin, flat and spare. True, there were historical motifs, but they appeared super- imposed; they were not done straight but with irony for, as Tom Wolfe acutely observed in Bauhaus to Our House, Ven- turi was not a true apostate; he was still part of the self-regarding, avant-garde 'compound' of intellectual, anti-bourgeois architects — Complexity and Contradic- ..tion, after all, was published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Irony is all-important. That Post- Modernism is usually discussed in linguistic terms is significant, for Charles Jencks, the tireless promoter and interpreter of the phenomenon, is exclusively concerned with semiology, with the conveyance of meaning in architecture. Mr Jencks, also an American, is a witty and intelligent commentator as well as an occasional architect. He loves to categorise, to distin- guish between Post- and Late-Modernism, to define Free Style Classicism, Radical Eclecticism and Adhocism in architecture. In 1977 he published the most significantly titled The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, a book hugely influential on students and young architects which is now in its fifth edition. Jencks applied semiolo- gical ideas about signs to architecture and he concluded that the failure of the Mod- ern Movement was the failure of a mode of architectural communication: the Modern Movement died because it was dumb. The linguistic analogy explains why Post- Modernism is the ambivalent style it is, for it `speaks on two levels at once: to other architects and a concerned minority who care about specifically architectural mean- ings, and to the public at large, or the local inhabitants, who care about other issues concerned with comfort, traditional build- ing and a way of life. This Post-Modern architecture looks hybrid . . . In short, it is a less arid architecture, which enables its adherents still to feel morally and intellec- tually superior to their clients and to the general public.

Now the linguistic analogy is far from new in architecture — Sir John Summer- son, after all, wrote The Classical Lan- guage of Architecture . The trouble is that Post-Modernism is not only not a precise language; it may also have nothing to say. More to the point, a building can have two windows above a central door and so be a 'face house' and so humane, familiar, but this does not affect whether it is well or badly built, whether it is efficient and watertight, whether it is pleasing or ugly; in short, whether it is good or bad architecture.

But Charles Jencks remains convinced that the purpose of architecture is to convey meaning and that this is best achieved through symbolism. In his latest book, Towards a Symbolic Architecture, he notes how 'several of us in different coun- tries, now grouped under the Post-Modern banner, have been making modest efforts towards a symbolic architecture'. What is impressive about Mr Jencks is that he has the courage of his convictions, for most of this lavish volume is devoted to the illustra- tion and interpretation of his own 'Thema- tic House', the extraordinary conversion of a humble Holland Park terraced house into a central monument of Post-Modernism. Even Mr Jencks, however, concedes that a symbolic architecture is difficult when we live in an age that has no consistent system of belief and set of values. The conditions that enabled a mediaeval cathedral to be a popular didactic work of art and crafts- manship have long passed, so the Jencks House is left to symbolise the obvious: the passage of time — there are rooms for each of the four seasons and a spiral staircase with 52 steps.

But why bother? Jencks observes that when he takes guests around the Thematic House, 'I notice that whether they like the building or not, many' — and here I know he is thinking of me — 'regard my explana-

tions as either reductive or superfluous.' Superfluous, I am afraid: the spiral stair would still be impressive even if it had only 51 steps. It has all been done before. W. R. Lethaby wrote a book in 1891 called Architecture, Mysticism and Myth which encouraged Arts and Crafts architects to

make their designs all the more elaborate through recondite, occult symbolism. Lethaby's friend, Weir Schultz, made St Andrew's Chapel in Westminster Cathed- ral have a vault like the sky and a floor like the sea, with marble inlaid with sea crea- tures. But this is not the reason why it is beautiful.

Symbolic architecture can easily de- generate into pretentiousness. It is best when it is a simple joke, as with the symbolic 'egg cups' — representing break- fast — on Terry Farrell's TV-am studio in Camden Town. Lutyens was the master of the architectural joke, but his were not symbolic statements but mannerisms, such as the pilasters which have bases and capitals but disappear into the rustication in between (as on the Midland Bank in Poultry in the City). The Thematic House is naturally full of Post-Modern Classical jokes. A good one is in the kitchen, which has a Doric entablature-cum-shelf — the metopes are gaps for teapots, etc, while the triglyphs are made of wooden spoons.

Post-Modern Classicism has become, therefore, a whimsical misuse of Classical elements. Certainly a distinct style can be detected, characterised by the perverse and non-structural use of mouldings, col- umns reduced to cylinders, and a penchant for the semi-circular gable and a strange segmental shape with a stepped bottom which is a motif Jencks claims as his own — the `Jencksiana' — having evolved it in about 1975. Many of these elements can be found in the work of Piers Gough, a young architect of real wit who designed the jacuzzi in the Jencks House, and in the increasingly huge schemes of Terry Farrell, a resourceful planner who is an accom- plished exponent of 'contextualism' — working with existing urban fabrics (perhaps the most positive aspect of Post- Modernism) — and who abandoned the harsh language of 'High Tech' for that of Jencks. Farrell was responsible for many of the best features of the Thematic House; that he is designing skyscrapers to straddle London Wall and office developments to loom over Charing Cross Station shows that Post-Modernism is thoroughly accept- able to planners if not to all architects.

The most vulgar elements in the Thema- tic House — monumental chimney-pieces which support fat tubes, or columns, sup- porting busts — were designed by Michael Graves, an American architect responsible for much of the language of Post- Modernism. Graves began as one of the East Coast 'Whites', a coterie of architects who developed an utterly esoteric language from the style of the early Modern Move- ment. Pretentiousness to the point of obscurity is the essence of these heroes of the architectural schools, whose careers were made by teaching and drawing rather than by building — Tom Wolfe, that unerring deflater of pseudery in architecture, quotes Graves speaking about 'a level of participation that involves the reciprocal act of ourselves with the figure of the building'. Then Graves went Post-Modern, not in built work but in charming, abstracted drawings in crayon, depicting arches and keystones in pastel shades which soon became highly regarded and very expensive.

It ig no accident that the principal interpreters of the rhetoric of Post- Modernism are all American. It is difficult, I think, for Europeans to appreciate just how seriously American architects take themselves. Charles Jencks made a televi- sion film in 1983 — also published as a book — called Kings of Infinite Space in which Frank Lloyd Wright and Graves were compared as significant architects who have kept architecture as an art. Mr Graves did not demur, but the only com- parison I found convincing was in terms of the two men's squalid private lives — Graves seems almost proud of the number of women who have divorced him. It seems to me, however, that Frank Lloyd Wright was a very great architect who developed a personal language which was based far more upon materials and structure than it was on any symbolic iconography. Graves's Post-Modernism, on the other hand, is all iconography; the buildings themselves are thin, flat, and tawdry. Nor is this quality exclusive to Graves.

Charles Jencks hopes that 'we are only taking the first step in the Post-Modern tradition, a beginning where art, ornament and symbolism are starting again'. I would be more optimistic if I felt that Post- Modernists were trying to learn other lessons from the past, about Commodity and Firmness as well as Delight, which were understood well by the Edwardian Pre-Modernists as well as by the Renaiss- ance. Architecture is more than cosmetics. The essential bankruptcy of Post- Modernism is shown by James Stirling's two alternative designs for redeveloping Mappin & Webb's for Peter Palumbo, each with an arbitrary external treatment of overscaled columns and arches which bear no logical relationship to the interior. All we can be thankful for is that these designs are not loaded with pretentious symbolism. No wonder architectural students are re- turning to the Modern Movement. Plus fa change . . . . two alternative designs for redeveloping Mappin & Webb's for Peter Palumbo, each With an arbitrary external treatment of overscaled columns and arches which bear no logical relationship to the interior. All we can be thankful for is that these designs are not loaded with pretentious symbolism. No wonder architectural students are re- turning to the Modern Movement. Plus ca change . .