A Catholic Church in Saigon
Since my mind has been on architecture lately and I saw a bit of thought-provoking architecture in Vietnam, I thought I’d write another article on my architectural ponderings (and please enjoy the random photos as well!). On the subject of Post-Modernism (Po-Mo), I feel like the next stage for society is to emerge from the directionless subjective randomness that is life after the myth of Modernism. As Po-Mo has taught us, there is no ultimate and absolute answer to the problems posed by Modernity and society today. The International Style and Corbusier’s theories for efficiency in building and the vitality of the automobile have created a world in which ubiquitous glass, steel, energy hogging architecture have become the norm for cities around the world. Po-Mo surfaced as we realized that the technology-driven progress of Modernity did not solve the problems of society but instead created new ones such as environmental degradation, a deceptive virtual reality, and new outbreaks of diseases. With it came the doubt in the power of architecture as an idealized universal economic solution that met the aesthetic needs of man, the end of any discernible “style”, and the realized shortfalls of comprehensive urban planning.
Nocturnal worshipers at Notre Dame in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
What was once a maximally efficient “machine for living” with its plain white walls restricted of any unnecessary ornament became a symbol for the foundering of the past age of technological presumptuousness. Without the goal of maximum economy, architects such as Michael Graves, Robert Venturi, and at times Arata Isozaki turned towards the past quoting elements from historical styles in an attempt to summon antiquity’s power to satisfy historical man’s aesthetic needs for the modern subject. Others like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid pushed modernism further using new technologies to create heretofore inconceivable designs completely devoid of economy and historical reference. Po-Mo was an age without style, without rules, and without laws. Architects ceased to writing manifestoes because Po-Mo taught us that it was impossible to expound anything flawlessly comprehensive.
As we stand today in our Po-Mo age floundering about in the tumultuous aftermath of Modernity, we struggle for a new direction, a new guiding goal for our efforts.
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Gah I’m really not in the mood to finish writing everything I was thinking of when I started that post yesterday, but I’ll sum up my main points about climate and its dictates over the limits of energy efficient design and how it governs all sustainable strategies that are inherently local based on the available materials and natural energy sources. Unlike the age when concrete, glass, and steel were the cure all to end all as far as materials for architecture were concerned, regional differences and regional architecture must once-again emerge as architects search for materials with low embodied energy costs which will express the spirit and nature of the place. As Prof. Baek at a talk I just went to on Watsuji Tetsuro argued, the design strategies that utilize the benefits of the natural climate have an effect on the social and ethical interactions between the building’s inhabitants. Prof. Baek’s concrete example was of cross ventilation in Japanese homes. The openness required to have efficient cross ventilation also leads to a lack of privacy within the home and reinforced social attitudes of openness within family relationships. In any case, the concept of climate as the dictator of architectural design and consequently the social interactions within that space was my first point for this little tidbit.
A zen garden at Daitokuji
My second point was going to be about the return of religion (in the sacred, spiritual, and numinous not dogmatic sense) after the death of science. Firstly, science is not quite dead per se, but Post Modern doubt definitely dealt a blow to our faith in the wonders of technology. For all the technological development of Modernism, contemporary man has noticed something lacking, perhaps a spiritual emptiness or perhaps distanced contact from understanding oneself as more than just an accumulation of molecules. The rise of new age spirituality with a particular blossoming of eastern religious philosophies is indicative of man’s search to rediscover the sacred, spiritual, and other-worldly. Technological gadgetry could not satisfy the needs of the spirit. Architects have sought to infuse a sense of the sacred and other-worldly in the buildings they create. These buildings, while sometimes actual houses of worship, are not necessarily confined to religious edifices. Whether a house by Tadao Ando, a bath by Peter Zumthor, or museum by Louis Kahn the sacred, spiritual, transcendent, numinous, whatever you want to call it other-worldy sensation pervades and fills the viewer’s inner sense of being. There is something awe-inspiring about the architecture of the ineffable which Modernism could not account for.
Burning pyre at Yoshida Shrine at the Setsubun Festival
That’s about all that was on my mind I think when I started that post, but I hope that architectural design that accounts for climactic and spiritual needs will be more prevalent in the coming years. In any case, there needs to be something that guides design out of the chaotic forest of relativity that is post modernism.
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