Paradise on offer

From time immemorial, the harsh reality of life has tried to accustom great architecture to the idea that it is nothing more than a stake in political games, economic calculations or someone's aspiration for glory. But it has not, noble and dignified, and has always claimed its creative independence, its social responsibility and its awareness of being a witness to the highest level reached by an era (not measured in m²/vertical).

A vast field of negotiation has always stretched between the two moral positions of the status of architecture - that of subservience to harsh reality or that of a free humanist conscience. The variables involved - such as the quality of the commissioner, the quality of the architect, the substantive intent of the initiative, the political environment of the action, the scope of the project, the limits of the budget, etc. - have always combined in a specific alchemy. However, in each epoch, these ontic gestures, which are in fact ontic, but which are prosaically called investments, have been categorized. As types, they became each time more or less predictable. And if they have been successful (quickly quantifiable, one understands!), this success, plus the comfort of predictability, plus the operating mechanism put in place, have encouraged the continuation on an ever-increasing scale of the architecture business in question. The quantity of that architecture has also increased.

As for the quality or non-quality of that architecture, it always results, in the end, from the balance or non-balance between the two negotiators: the harsh reality of life represented by the financier and the humanist conscience represented by the architect.

Here is what I understand has happened in recent decades: economists have scientifically explained that a law of economic growth, according to which the market economy has an infinite capacity for self-regulation, guarantees the global economic system and hence the growth of these decades. Another law, intuitive, tried to warn that all good things must come to an end, based empirically on the observation that even Adam did not stay forever in Paradise. Then, another economic law was invoked, namely that, let, every decline carries within it the seeds of the next rise. The scientific argument won out and the architecture business boomed until, in September 2008, the first post-boom crash was heard. There immediately followed thousands of pops, pops, pops and then a brrr! that never stops. Now nobody is talking about the next boom. On the contrary, the same reality of life is trying to get us used to the idea that the crisis will be our new normal for a long time to come.

The question is whether there is a connection between the boom of the 1990s and the global economic crisis on the one hand, and the ethical and aesthetic crisis of architecture itself on the other. There is a temporal coincidence, however: in the 1990s, the dawn of our last Belle Époque coincided with the crisis of architecture that began at the dawn of deconstructivism.

How does one recognize the ideological crisis of architecture? Well, most simply by the overwhelming explosion of paradise architecture. Which is what? Well, here are its two categories of symbols:

I. The slew of heroic high-rise and suburban housing estates, from Koreatyp to Troika and from Palm Islands-Dubai to Saftica Luxury Residential;

II. The tallest towers, from Petronas-Kuala Lumpur, through Millennium-Japan, to Burj Khalifa-Dubai, plus Manhattan's model tower forests. Three for the price of two, perhaps.

The architecture of paradise was the result of the partnership between banking capital and architects, i.e. between the pole of pragmatism and the pole of morality, as I said. The partnership was unequal, everyone recognizes that. When did the moral force, standing alone in opposition to financial power, win the day? The result in architecture was that the product of the developers' aesthetic imagination materialized, that is to say in the form of havens. Then, as the market success of the havens increased, the moral force of the architects decreased. Because: one, we have known for thousands of years that the stubborn pursuit of making money, if unrestrained, leads to moral decline; two, the moral strength of architects is vulnerable by their contracted nature; three, the moral strength of architects was increasingly annihilated by investors, who ignored the doubters and quickly hired the unconditional marchers; four, the poor architects could not resist succumbing to the enthusiastic public, giddy with the prospects of life offered in green paradises and dazzled by the increasingly retinal (Marcel Duchamp's term for retinal) great public architecture. And the more investors swelled, the more excessive the retinal architecture became, and the more anodyne the paradises in green places.

So at first sight it seems that, yes, there is a link between the general economic crisis and the internal crisis of architecture. At second glance, we can take up the three aspects. There are three of i: intellection, real estate and icons.

1. The intelligentsia of architecture, i.e., critical discourse, has been warning for a long time, but it did so like St. John in the desert. In fact, it only warned the small elite circle of those who still read, who didn't need to be warned because they were of the same opinion and couldn't do anything about it anyway. Thus, for example, Jencks asked in exasperation in 2006 about self-referential vertical structures, which he called ^eye-con1: How big is bad? How big reaches the too big?

To the financial interest, however, this skeptical intelligentsia was not as dangerous as the oscillating intellectual blanket once was to Lenin, so it simply let the reverberations of its discourse fade evanescently into libraries, bookstores, and boardrooms. But, who knows, maybe eventually everyone had begun to believe in the endless wonder, savant-guaranteed by the vocal economists.

As for criticism through avant-garde, experimental architecture, the kind that pushes the limits of the present and maps out the future, there was less and less time for it during the economic boom. And now there's no money.

Now, in the crisis, the theoretical subject has reopened from a different perspective. Not that there is a wider audience, but optimists still hope that the lessons of what we have experienced can help save the future. Zvi ^Hecker2, for example, believes that the slowdown in construction activity and the emergence of a new aesthetic reality are fertile ground for new ideas to germinate. They will flourish when the economy recovers. That's the optimistic scenario. One can imagine a pessimistic one. But I don't want to.

Other optimists remember the last recession in the 1980s, which was almost overcome with a pen, by the architect-intellectuals then out of work. But that was the 80s.

2. Real estate. When the oil money combined with the abstract money liberalized by its gold coating, out of too many became endless. That's how I understood it to explain their swooping into the real estate market and building residential developments on thousands and thousands of subdivided acres. The result was thousands and thousands of homes made to be sold, not lived in. The public's aesthetic sensibilities were quickly flattered by lofts, large living rooms and garage spaces, but this has hastened the aesthetic downfall of real architecture. When the goal of investment is only short-term profit, architecture loses in the long run. It has happened because the negotiation between real estate speculation - with its adjuncts of efficiency and competitiveness, and the architects' covenant with the public good - with its adjuncts of social ethics, sustainability and appropriateness, this negotiation has been insufficient, rushed and unfair.

This explains why there is almost nothing left of the moral authority that modernism up to 1931 had conferred on its marvelous housing estates: in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, in Berlin, Hellerau or Frankfurt am Main. Nor the sublime altruism of a generation left to innovate. Then the architects were alone in the face of too great a responsibility, now they were alone in the face of a power that crushed their responsibility.

In the Third World, the capitalist interests of the banks have also had the good fortune to encounter the dramatic frustrations of the population, due to autocratic regimes. And then, to the gray landscapes of block neighborhoods were added colorful suburban landscapes of picturesque mansions on lawned lots, strung like soldiers on easement roads. Their flat (if by a developer) or eclectic (if by private owners), monofunctional architecture, in both cases out of aesthetic control, is saved from anonymity only by the pigment of Baumit. And as ensembles, the compositions are also out of real spatial control: they are either unimaginative or saved from monotony, but plunged into visual chaos thanks to ad hoc abusive PUZs.

3. Icons. If it still played the game of finance and still turned a blind eye to the ethical background of architecture, how could architects resist the temptation to demonstrate their virtuosity by producing mega-objects of mega-spectacular imagery? A corporate decision would be followed by a 3D sleight of hand, and immediately an "icon" would appear in real space. Tower or huge sculpture. But an icon of whom, the critics wondered, certainly not of architecture. Perhaps of technology, infinite growth and consumerism. Otherwise, being outside iconography, the so-called icon was just a false metaphor, because the signifier lacked the signified - at any rate the architectural one. The presence of the absence, Daniel Libeskind called them. But such gestures often turned places into strange spaces, where you felt like a stranger. More and more things moved from Europe to America, then Southeast Asia and the Arab world.

The height of irony was that this whole farce of the rise and fall of the financial empire was played out for us by the banks, from their iconic headquarters, so suggestively disguised in glass. A marvelous material, praised for its transparency.

Charles Jencks, Charles ^Bessard3, Nanne de ^Ru4, Philip Starck himself, Daniel Libeskind and others have associated the phenomenon of the new (more or less sterile) monumentality with the culture of "signature architecture". Nothing would have been wrong with celebrity culture if it had stopped at the effect

Bilbao effect, i.e. the one that brings in huge tourism revenues. But other countries - namely some with authoritarian regimes - have discovered the power of Western star architectural emblems, and had the money to buy them. The question then was: should Rem Koolhaas or Herzog & De Meuron products, which carry values such as democracy or creative freedom, be produced in Beijing or Abu Dhabi under regimes that do not believe in these values? There the signifier turns the signified into a fake, which is worse than the lack of it. These architects were criticized for their compromises, and they defended themselves as best they could.

We would have criticized them too, if we were Dutch, Scandinavian or Swiss. But from here, from quasi Byzantium Byzantium5, we can, I think, tolerate their deviations. They may have tried to negotiate, but, as I was saying, we understand how hard it is for architects to resist temptation.

In fact, if you think about it, here in Romania, we're not so bad. Residential developments, at least as a social phenomenon, were welcome, they had to appear. Architecturally, of course, they weren't supposed to look like that, but that's the way it is. As for urbanism, time will sort things out - up to a point, of course, we're not Switzerland, as I said. As for the "icons" of capitalism, the general resistance has been so great (for one reason or another) that we've gotten away without much. The ones there are, as many as there are, I, for one, can live with.

But the real icons, as Noica said, have probably come, and sooner or later they didn't.

Dubai, a corner of heaven

The year 1972, when Venturi and Scott Brown first wrote Learning from Las Vegas, was the year the United Arab Emirates was formed. It couldn't have occurred to the authors then that the most diligent would learn from Las Vegas in a fishing village in another desert, far, far away: Dubai.

I have been to Dubai. A cosmopolitan place, with nice, civilized and welcoming people, of whatever race. Dubai is perhaps the extreme symbol of the economic phenomenon I have been talking about, the city that has staked its hopes solely on object architecture, dreaming of turning itself into a paradise. However, it has totally ignored urban planning, with all its environmental, social, spatial, rational urban management and sustainable development adherences. It has ignored the fact that there are some people, a little foolish, but many, who are not attracted to paradise: they don't like milk with honey and ambrosia, they are not passionate about taxation, they don't get vertigo at the casino and they don't just have shopping on their mind. But they would prefer to walk the streets on a human scale, within reasonable distances, with small sights, no freeways in their heads, car screeching in their ears and exhaust fumes in their noses.

Even if they can't afford the Burj al Arab, these normal people would love to be allowed to walk up to it. Just as, incidentally, they would like the presence of the ocean, with its fantastic water, to be emphasized more for the public. You can see that the city was not designed for normal tourists. But not for its normal, working inhabitants either. Paradise for whom then?

We experienced Dubai at leisure, in the most favorable climatic season (December) and not by coach. Neither by taxi - the almost unanimous mode of transportation, although there is a very elegant metro and luxurious but empty buses. Both in the buses and in their beautiful stations, the air-conditioning runs continuously, although in winter there is no need.

It was explained to me that the most rational thing to do would be to buy a car and abandon it when I leave. This is common practice.

I assumed, as usual, walking - a unique and unimaginable extravagance in a city designed for taxis. Of course, I still had to take a taxi. Once I took it and walked a couple of kilometers to a roundabout and back, because I couldn't cross the "High Street", the boulevard-highway that is the backbone of the new city.

There is the old city - on a human scale, with people, and the new city - its twenty-fold extension along the coast but deserted.

A couple of times I've been to the old town, where I most enjoyed the Heritage Village, the bazaars (souks) and the local history museum.

The new town means spots of sky scrapers alternating with wide areas of villas, both seeded along a sprawling, 20-lane plus exits, 20-kilometer-long spine, and a subway overhead.

Yes, indeed, the Western landscaped sky scrapers areas have fascinating architecture. Even so, devoid of semantic content, you can't help but be impressed. But I thought the Burj Khalifa was where life was pulsating.

I found the malls, with all their eccentricities, justifiably welcome for those who don't like socializing at 48 degrees Celsius. I also shivered my way through the aquarium and skied, amused by the exoticism of the situation. In general, most special attractions use water, ice, snow; it's an explicable symptom of a frustration with desert life. Malls exist for normal people, too, in this city designed as a haven for the rich.

The spra sprawling villa areas have a hippodamic grid with very generous meshes. You'd think the whole infrastructure is a gift from heaven. Actually, in a way, it is.

Everywhere there are artificially planted and maintained landscaping, either with a pump at the base or with plants perched on shrubs. The most abundant and beautiful is found along high-speed boulevards and at multi-level roadway intersections, where I have never seen a pedestrian.

Overlaps and juxtapositions of eras and styles are frequent and interesting.

The most breathtaking experience I had was on Palm Island. How exotic and fascinating it looked on Google Earth!

You get there via a hellish system of highways.

Then you drive through a much bigger Victory of Socialism that Ceaușescu would have died of envy over.

Finally, you reach the Palm Islands. The grand main boulevard, with luxury villas on either side, is followed overhead by a monorail. All along this axis, as on the whole island, you have no access to the ocean.

You can only see the blue expanse of water at the end of the artificial island, after crossing a huge underpass, which takes you past a sort of House of Sparkle combined with the People's House and Kazan train station, with an Arabic motif cut out in the middle. It's a big hotel with a mall.

Otherwise there are no commercial spaces or public places on the island, as such no people; just boulevards, blocks, villas and cars. (There's also a very nice contemporary mosque somewhere.)

Public, even pedestrian, access is forbidden on the side streets, i.e. palm branches, as it were. But there are no amateurs, either.

The luxury villas on these branches don't see the ocean either, but the gardens and beaches behind the houses look out across a canal to each other.

All in all, Dubai is a place of wonders. It's a heaven for the pure souls of those who admire the suspended, cloud-scraping highways and luxuriously styled villas and pools; who only drive in all seasons and only visit places where the buses stop; who love shopping and mall leisure; for the Google visitor-visitor. And fittingly, it's hell only for the grumblers, who wonder how the money could have been spent differently, for the public and for the future.

But, as there is so much injustice in the world, even in heaven, it is not only the deserving who get into heaven. So, deserving or not - et in Arcadia ego.

NOTES:

¹ Meaning either: 1, cones made to impress the eyes only; 2, from con, in the sense of confidence trick; 3, from con, in the sense of to concede, yielding to the culture of the image.

² Article from Rien ne va plus, a notebook published by the Powerhouse Company on the occasion of the exhibition organized in 2009 by the magazine Arhitectura1906, old edition.

³ idem

⁴ idem

⁵ Or neither-Byzantium, see Daniel Barbu, Bizanț contra Bizanț, Editura Nemira, 2001, written after Augustin Ioan's Bizanț after Bizanț after Bizanț after Bizanț.