The Future of Architecture is Hidden in the Past of Architecture
What if we already knew everything?
Architecture is fascinating
We’ve been living in different types of shelters since the very beginning of humanity. Maybe they weren’t the most comfortable houses at first — but we’ve learnt how to make them better.
Haven’t we?
The walled oasis town of Jericho began to be inhabited between 8,500–6,000 BC. The earliest houses were round and made of sun-dried mud brick. Not far away, the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia was home to some eight thousand people between 7,000–5,500 BC. There weren’t any streets, houses were arranged like a honeycomb and people wandered across the rooftops. By 2,800 BC, city-states extended from the Persian Gulf to just south of modern Baghdad.
More than 10,000 years of our built history have left an impressive legacy that include the mysterious pyramids of Giza, the vast archaeological site of Teotihuacan and monumental temples such as the Taj Mahal — to name a few. One can travel the length of the world admiring man’s capacity to create — from scratch — wonderful built environments.
Cities are undoubtedly humankind’s greatest achievement.
And yet, after years of built history, architectural knowledge and endless opportunities to learn from our past, we keep tripping over the same stone. Generation after generation.
The role of cities and buildings in our lives
First of all, cities have historically been dictated by the facts of geography. The site for a prosperous human settlement had some basic aspects to be covered: safety, proximity to natural resources and favourable climate conditions. That’s why most successful ancient cities — still in the same location nowadays — were built in valleys, close to a river or geographically near the equator.
With hindsight this seems obvious. Cities like Athens, Cusco, Cairo and even London were set for success since their creation.
If citizens were responsible for making cities, in return, cities also shaped its men and women.
People make cities, and cities make citizens. Cities are not machines, built once and for all, but extraordinary organisms.
Throughout history, cities have produced an unprecedented flowering of culture, commerce and technology. However, this influx of population clustered together has also presented some disadvantages. More Athenians died from disease than from war. In 430–28 BC, one epidemic killed a quarter of their armed forces. In fact, diseases have always been present in the streets and crowded dwellings of big cities. The Great Plague of 1665 alone killed around 100,000 people, about a quarter of London’s population — in only 18 months.
Cities can also be dangerous. Illnesses, poor air quality, overcrowding, fires and risk of war have been constant threats to urban centres.
What can we learn from big cities?
In 1972, architect and city planner Oscar Newman published Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space. His findings on crime and high-rise apartment buildings in New York were mind-blowing. There was a correlation between density and crime in social housing. On the other side of the pond, London was struggling with the same social issues. People were being mugged and raped at the footsteps of their homes in Trellick Tower (Ernö Goldfinger, 1972). Yet, it took several years to stop building this typology of high rise structures.
If we understand cities as ecosystems where societies flourish, shouldn’t we take more seriously what buildings we add to their urban grids?
The history of Architecture can teach us some essential lessons about the evolution of cities. As forms of art and centres of life:
- Cities have always and would always exist.
- Growth and density present both a challenge and an opportunity.
- Humans live in buildings.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average American spends 93% of their life indoors. 87% of their life is indoors, then another 6% of their life in automobiles. That’s only 7% of your entire life outdoors.
Then, why do we care so little about the buildings in which we spend a lifetime?
Who builds cities anyways?
Interestingly, many players other than architects have designed the social condition of the millions who dwell in them.
In many cities, it was often some large builder who was responsible for the development or redevelopment of a considerable estate in conformity with a unified plan of his own making as William Ashworth explains in The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning. Was the well-being of its inhabitants the main priority of these builders?
On the other hand, even the motivations of the public sector could sometimes seem suspicious. For instance, Becontree Estate, constructed as the largest public housing estate in the world between 1921 and 1935, was a concerning collectivist and socialist experiment. L.C.C. went on building houses even when it was obvious that there would be no schools for the children of the tenants.
Perhaps it is inevitable that architectural experiments have a highly probability of failure. Should we then stop getting creative with what we’d like cities to look like?
Brasília, a heroic attempt to realise the Modernist urban hypothesis of Le Corbusier and the CIAM, was founded as one of the largest construction projects in human history. Architecturally and as a display of power, it was a success. But as an attempt to create a dynamic urban centre, Brasília was a failure.
The future of architecture
Detroit and St Louis were promising enough in one sense, however, if we go back to the basics of cities (safety, access to natural resources and climate conditions), they proved immensely unsuccessful. They are slowly falling into decline, like many other cities created in the hey day of the railway.
Can we then make predictions on other emerging cities such as Las Vegas or Dubai which are thriving thanks to the newer means of transport: the airplane?
More recently, Foster + Partners were commissioned the design of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi — with a budget of $22 billion. The project proposes an exciting carbon-neutral eco-city. Almost as exciting as Brasília might have looked like back in the day.
“Sustainable, humane and well-governed cities are our best hope for the future.” P. D. Smith, City
Have we not learnt anything about creating cities from scratch? Is it hopeful or delusional that we continue to think we can play gods?
Yuval Noah Harari makes a very interesting point at the end of his book Sapiens:
Despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals
Our role as citizens
Aeons hence — no doubt — nature will have her way with the miles of brick and concrete, stone and glass. But will there not be a time where we give cities, buildings and architecture the attention they deserve?
We are doomed to live in cities and this is perhaps the best opportunity we have to make them amazing. Because we can. Because we must.
By reading, visiting and being interested in architecture, we actively seek to understand and fix our building challenges of the future.
Because perhaps, the future of architecture is already written in our past.
