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1984
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY'S IMPLICATIONS ON THE SEARCH FOR A RELEVANT APPROACH
TO ARCHITECTURE
The mechanical,
materialistic interpretation of the Bauhaus Movement has outrun its validity.
The elegance and the clarity of the Bauhaus which was so self-evident
in its time is no longer as convincing today. All the major economic and
social theories have also come into disrepute. We are living in an age
of intel-lectual crisis, reflected in the chaos and confusion in the world.
But as practising architects in this part of the Third World, we have
to face momentous changes and yet must act coherently even though we are
pulled in all directions.
A cohesive philosophy that grows out from the complex polygon of forces
including our geogra-phical environment, able to hold together and yet
transform all these forces into a new synthesis,
is needed and is only beginning to become conscious as Asian intellectuals
and pro-fessionals start to look "in" as well as look "out"
for new and relevant universal principles and attitudes with which to
guide their work.
Some important contributions have been made by Asian architects in recent
years. Kurokawa draws attention to the need to question the Western thought
process itself. He suggests that we should look into the rich Asian intellectual
heritage for our points of reference. He analyses the bi-polar fixation
in Western thought and replaces it with an Asian tri-polar viewpoint which
defines a neutral zone between polar opposites as the zone of maximum
tension and therefore of creativity. He interprets this in urban space
as the indeterminate zone of multiple activity. Maki brings us into a
greater awareness of the nature of the Asian City in its anticipatory
layering of spaces and an awareness of hidden cores within visual masses.
Charles Correa
talks of the umbrella versus the cube, reminding all Asians again of the
climatic imperatives as they act on our culture and archi-tecture. Sumet
Jumsai brings a healing sense when he, in the midst of narrow cultural
interpretation, talks of the common water-based cultures of Southeast
Asia and their linkage to the larger Pacific community. Whilst all these
views and ideas are important in the awakening of a purposeful and self-conscious
design process which will give our work real meaning in the lives of the
communities in which we live, we may yet unwittingly misapply them in
appropriate circumstances and with insufficient forcefulness if we do
not have a coherent theory to tie them all together.
The purpose of this essay is to re-analyse our contemporary reality into
its constituent parts in order to establish a framework to see the precise
location of our problems and of ourselves within it. For without such
a perspective, it is easy to be lost in the contradictions we face and
be swept off our feet by the parade of ideas that are constantly spewing
out from the mass media.
The concept of wholeness in the Asian intellectual and artistic heritage
is important and still relevant. It is through the concept of wholeness
that we can develop a toughness in our attitudes in handling contradictions.
The critique of modernism in architectural circles has been its inability
to deal with symbols, sentiments and identities. What we need is a new
modernism, one in which the search for contextual truth is not biased
towards those things that are readily rationalisable but can include matters
of the spirit and of the senses. The rich oriental traditions can be a
source of inspiration for the new modernists in searching for a new dynamic
balance of the complex and contradictory realities in which we all live
in the search for the truth about them.
We need to recover a relevant sense of the resolution of contradictions,
through the concepts of harmony and non-extremism of our ancient philosophers
and poets.
The present laissez-faire attitude towards architectural design is a reaction
against the blandness and uniformity of over-regulated modern life. The
problem is particularly focussed in the rapidly developing parts of the
Third World where the rich cultural heritage is still very much alive
but is being abruptly pushed against modern values regained by the modern
state. There is real concern in the Third World that it will lose its
heritage and be submerged by the modern mass culture and that undesirable
aspects of the international culture will subvert national will and purpose.
When settlements began on exceptionally favourable sites, tribal ethnicity
as an identifiable social and cultural form began. These reflected not
only the responses to the specific geographical and environmental factors,
they also reflect the accidents of choice and or genius of people in responding
to the challenges of their environment. After this, city states and regions,
culture became more elaborate. New ideas came in and interacted with indigenous
ones. Many new civic urban values and form-notions and architectural styles
originate from this period. Ethnic styles of archi-tecture reflecting
the specific climatic res-ponses and the technical and cultural inventions
or genius of a particular culture came to possess distinguishable forms.
Links began between ethnic cultures across vast dividing territories.
There may have been actual contact or rumoured ones, but as a result all
cultures became connected however thinly by a web of knowledge and ideas.
All cultures are in fact at the periphery of other cultures and constantly
they absorb parts of adjacent cultures into their own and they con-tribute
to them as well. During the colonial or western domination period, the
transfer of information across cultural boundaries was accelerated. Today,
the international culture spreads to all parts of the world and not everything
is good or useful.
What needs to be done is to select the relevant universal principles both
from the past as well as from the present. Given that there exists a common
ancient universal
set of values that underlies all of humanity, plus the values gained by
a specific geographical and historical experience, the ultimate criteria
which decides what is or is not of value are the on-going unfolding of
new universals. Only those values which have cultural validity and can
stay abreast of production-related criteria as it develops can survive
in the modern period.
The new universals therefore join the ancient universals as history unfolds
and expands.
Apart from the political dimensions of this problem, I propose that the
problem of identity can be seen as a dynamic process linking the ancient
evolutionary universals through universal principles of the different
stages of a particular region's history into the modern period with the
emergence of relevant new universals.
Therefore, the search for the distinctive quali-ties of a culture must
involve the discovery or rediscovery of aspects which although they are
specific to the particular environment display principles which are universally
valid.
The most
obvious aspect of architecture in the tropical Third World must therefore
be concerned with life style, urban form and architecture that respond
to the hot and wet climate. The most serious challenge here is to derive
an archi-tecture relevant for high-rise and high density building forms.
The solution to this problem will inevitably generate a style of architecture
that will have a unique identity which cuts across all ethnic cultural
barriers. The incorporation of historical motifs in such a case will be
minor. The common preferences and affinities of the different Asian cultures
such as those noted by Sumet Jumsai and by Fumihiko Maki will help to
give the healing, unifying and distinguishing characteristics of a modern
Asian architecture.
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