The Evolution of Modern Architecture On the Origin of Styles Chapter 8:

  1.0 Introduction   If the Developmental phase means anything it means the production of difference in architecture. Difference in this sense means adapting the generic forms of the dominant paradigm (grid/free plan) to particular circumstances. Inevitably this meant distorting the clean geometries of that style to meet the complexities of the moment and, equally to define the different characteristics of different places. This is what architects are supposed to do; create unique environments which are responsive to local circumstances and, equally responsive to the grammar and vocabulary of the dominant architectural language which had evolved out of the complications of the 19th century. While architects may select, adapt and combine forms from the experience of other architects the totality of these exchanges by thousands of architects can only result in a gradual stylistic shift in the characteristics of the current style, whatever style that was. While the Modern as a particular style may have emerged from the same numerous actions of architects, its statistical dominance had only occurred because of an entirely unforeseen shift in the socioeconomic environment which happened with the rise of the Industrial revolution and the generation of a whole new set of building types. In other words architects using exactly the same combinatorial processes were facing different kinds of problems and reacted with a ruthless pragmatism which destroyed the historicist formulae. Moving on, one must also remember that in systemic terms the Modern was simply a consensus of architectural decisions at a particular point in time and all provoked by the demands of a new socioeconomic system. Above all, architectural activity was continuous. No matter what the current socioeconomic system, architectural activity in terms of a collective process of selection, adaption and combination of forms would be the same but the results of that same activity might be radically different, whether a diversity of forms or a consensus of forms. Either way, the typological process may be seen as continuous while the demands of architecture’s ecosystem – the socioeconomic environment may be seen as the variable factor. So, here we have these two dimensions which determine architectural styles: the constant process of selection, adaptation and combination carried out by many architects and the varying states of the ecosystem. But what happens when the current socioeconomic is seemingly immortal? What then is the result of continuous architectural activity? The result as suggested above is, as usual simply the projection of difference. But in what way? It could only be towards a complexification of the generic forms in terms of shape, texture and colour as in the Developmental phase of an architecture. The recursive nature of architectural activity where the same rules of exchange and combination are applied to architectural form over and over again must inevitably produce increasingly different versions of the original paradigm. So, while the Developmental phase of an architecture exemplifies a drift away from the certainties of the original stylistic set, the question was, given the seeming immortality of the capitalist socioeconomic system, just how far that production of difference would go. What kind of architecture would result? Where could architecture go after the Developmental phase of its history, after it had been stretched to deal with so many different design problems in the massive economic expansion which took place after the war? As described in the previous chapter, adaptations in the forms of the Modern were focussed on the various programmatic niches which the architecture of the time had to deal with such as the schools, housing, hospitals and corporate buildings which were required after the war. Architecture is not a changing and free-floating entity like clouds in the sky. It is intimately locked into the physical here and now, into the programs, spaces, textures, colours and landscape which define the moment of the building. So, in dealing with all these new design problems, each one requiring a combination or recombination of the consensus, there occurs a bit by bit shift in the vocabulary of the Modern as each new project injects a new combination into the sphere of the Modern. In the tumultuous economic conditions of the post war world there were so many of these new configurations of space and form, so many projects which required a new and different set of characteristics that the only result of these many new combinations feeding back into the mass of architectural activity could only be the gradual or not so gradual dissolution of the consensus formed around the idea of the Modern. It had taken over three hundred years to dissolve the Renaissance model of architecture into the disparate group of sub-styles that made up the architecture of the 19th century. In the 20th century it took only 40 to 50 years from the 1920s to the 1970s to effect the same transformation from a clear consensus to a disparate group of styles which reflected not the pristine forms of the original Modern set but rather an eclectic selection of forms from anywhere in the history of architecture. This speed of change, a product of the tumultuous development of capitalism and its technological capacities after WWII could only result in a compression of the time it takes to dissolve the consensus of the Modern. No conscious efforts on the part of architects were required to produce this ‘fraying at the edges’ of the Modern paradigm. For architects under pressure from this dynamic socioeconomic environment, so many things to do, so many differences to make, so busy creating so many different environments. Difference, difference, adaptation and difference. 1.1Avant Garde Reaction to Continuing Developments Were there any conscious efforts in there trying to dissolve the orthogonal strictures of the Modern or unlock architecture from its concerns with the prevailing grammar of form? Of course, the avant-garde would see that that amongst these many differences of form, colour and disposition there lay the possibility of the ultimate freedom as they saw it to represent experience as it is lived; to close the gap between architectural form and lived experience. It is in this sense that one can understand the Modernist slogan of ‘Functionalism’ where the form of any building is supposedly and simply a diagram of the social forces acting on it. But, to be honest they themselves were limited by their historical circumstances and the available technology. To that extent they could only produce purified versions of the current consensus. It must be remembered that the avant-garde were, in a sense always behind the curve. They sought to discern the way things were going and the opportunities which lay there. If the collective tendencies were towards an inadvertent dissolution of the Modern paradigm then so be it. What then were the possibilities for architecture to achieve a final integration of life and art, blowing open the strictures of all and any rules, regulations, grammar or vocabulary prescribed by current dominant styles? There were few such possibilities of course given that architects were locked into the immediacy of the socioeconomic system; into the design of this building or that. Yet for the avant-garde there was this possibility of closing the gap between the form of buildings and life as it is lived. Realistically and, indeed logically there could be no such integration between these different dimensions. Inevitably life is much more complex than the (avant-garde) model which seeks to represent it no matter how beautiful these models were. The inherent impossibility of closing the gap between architecture and experience would leave architectural practice exactly where it had always been with a mass of trial and error experiments and a few provocative avant-garde models. 2.0A Mass of Projects By the 1960s and 1970s the Modern was diversifying to a remarkable degree. For architects there was so much to do, so many projects to realize, each and every one projected into the ecosystem as a possible imitative source. While these might not have been focussed on the direct expression of lived experience as per the radical avant-garde theory, they sought in all their innocence to represent or materialize the specific conditions of these various projects by combining and recombining previous assemblies of form. The question was of course how far this recursive process could continue without dissolving the principles of the Modern, without in other words producing architectural chaos. The Developmental phase in an architecture extends and elaborates on the possibilities which reside in the diagrammatic forms of the Emergent phase. Could Modern architecture really authentically represent this full panoply of projects and contexts thrown up by the post war economic boom? Well, that is what Development means, extending the possibilities of the current consensus, projecting form upon form, combination upon combination, each to meet some unique context and program. Yet here, by the 1970s we have a situation where there are more answers to problems than there are problems. Modern architecture had triumphed as the dominant force in architecture extending its principles and practices globally in parallel with and symbiotic with the Capitalist capture of many world economies. Where could this architecture go now driven by the endless activity of architects and their endless projects? When, indeed, there are more answers than there are problems in the architectural sphere, when the Developmental phase has run its elaborate course architecture has entered a new phase. That phase is Involution, which essentially means that architecture turns in on itself no longer seeking to extend its rule over new and different contexts but rather elaborating on its own formulae. 3.0 From Development to Involution   Before we investigate the conditions which prevail during the Involutionary phase of Modern architecture is worth noting that the history of architecture seems to vary according to the number of styles which are available for use at any given time. As suggested previously, we can also note the following: A Dominant Style While there are always a number of styles available at any time, in some periods there is a single dominant style used for most of the buildings built during that time, (a statistical not an aesthetic issue nor one of a pervading Zeigeist). Like all other styles the Modern had emerged from a radical recombination of antecedent styles. No styles – none – arise spontaneously in the midst of history. The Modern in theory offered a universal set of forms which could be applied to any and all building projects; that is the point of dominant styles. Whether the resulting buildings could express the full complexity of their building program or context was another matter, but there it was, a single answer to a myriad of problems and the economics of design that such a template could provide. 3.2The Niche Style In other periods there are a number of equally valid and equally used styles. These can only be understood as fragments of a previously dominant set which dissolved into a number of disparate sub-styles. It may also be that they are the remnants of long past defunct styles which slotted comfortably into some particular niche and stayed there uninfluenced by changing events. One can imagine here country cottages or even churches; building types developed in the Middle Ages which survived well into the 20th century. Later of course this niche style would be commandeered to provide the key suburban image of the village and the organic community. (A joke of course since the ‘villagers’ would commute every morning to the city to work and play).Yet the niche idea is important since it suggests a ground level reality which architecture must represent as against some universal set of forms which can be applied to any and every problem. It also suggests that there will be areas of the architectural environment which provide some comfortable niche for a long forgotten style. Much like the geological environment where seismic events displace huge areas of the environment, there remain these isolated pockets of past architectures which remain to be picked over by architectural antiquarians (or others looking for something exotically different to enliven the form of their buildings). 3.3The Limitations of a Universal Style The logic of a dominant architecture is always one where a single set of forms and its corresponding grammar could represent a vast array of experiences. This represented the ultimate economy of effort as against return in terms of design time and design thinking. If a general design template with some credibility was already available, why struggle to come up with something different and possibly risky? At the same time this template could, equally logically never represent all projects with any degree of authenticity to program and context. This universal model (an architectural style) could never be as complex as lived experience. The universal set of forms (the dominant style) could solve many architectural problems but it could never solve all of them all of time with any degree of authenticity. There always remained that memory of things past, of doing the same things differently. For the Modern there were few differences, only similarities or form imposed on different problems with all the questions of authenticity and lack of complexity that such a method would raise. In the post war world and right up to the late 1950s most architects bought into the idea (and ideal) of such a template given that they had so many design problems to solve. In some respects it was similar to the design catalogues of the 18th and 19th century which equally provided a repertoire of forms which could be legitimately combined to represent different projects. However, on reflection this could be seen as an architectural straightjacket which ignored the complexity of the program in favour of a coherent and ready-made form. So what was the problem? While the architectural form would denote a clear-cut order, (in the case of the Modern, a supposedly rational, cubic, standardized order), it could not express the disorder, spontaneity or messiness of the real world. It was a totalitarian solution to a democratic reality.   3.4City as the Memory of Architecture The history of architecture moves between these two poles of ‘singularity’ (a single dominant style used for all purposes) and plurality (a large number of styles available for the design of a single function), plus, of course these isolated remnants of long lost styles. In this sense of course architecture is quite akin to a complete ecosystem and its inherent diversity. How is that system remembered? It exists in the City and its environs. The City in this sense is the memory of architecture, endlessly changing and unchanging. It also provides the vocabulary of architecture. How else could individual architects become aware of current solutions to their own problems other than by looking at current (and past) projects? There, right in front of them there were forms or parts of forms which could be integrated into their own projects. Here was a very visible language available for exploitation and recombination. 3.5Architecture freed from Function The diversification of a dominant architectural style can be seen quite clearly in the 19th century where there were several equally-valid styles, including many variations on Classicism such as Neo-Baroque, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Greek, and so on. There were of course outright examples of Roman and Greek antecedents. There was of course also the major alternative to the Classical theme in the form of Neo-Gothic and its variations such as Venetian Gothic or the High Gothic mode or, more prevalent, Gothic vernacular/free plan. There were also suggestions of Mogul architecture and Moorish. In all of these cases the issue for architects was one of producing an appropriate difference in an attempt to identify unique contexts while remaining within a current consensus; a recognizable and familiar vocabulary. Above all the buildings had to be intelligible at least in terms of their vocabulary of forms or the grammar of their arrangement. Any relationship or association between the form of the building and its content or program had long since gone. Architecture at this point in its history had freed itself from such considerations and had become self-referential, playing a stylistic game of combination and recombination of recognizable parts. If these sometimes exotic styles were to be justified at all they would do so by some esoteric process of association between program and selection of forms as described in a previous chapter (design by association). It was all quite subjective of course but built on the common classical heritage and education of the architects of the time. 3.6From Dominant Style to a Group of Sub Styles The important question was why the classical/Renaissance consensus should have ended in a welter of different or relatively different styles. With direct relevance to the history of Modernism, one can ask why an initially coherent style should fragment into a number of different sub styles? This is not simply a question of individuals interpreting the new paradigm which was recognizable in the similarities between a large number of different projects. Individual architects must differentiate their buildings in order to define their unique context. To that extent there had to be continuous differences across the architectural spectrum even within the umbrella of a dominant architectural style. The individual project, the smallest of niches would, therefore reflect both similarities between projects (since their forms would be selected from the forms of numerous other projects) and differences generated by their individual conditions. But this systemic condition does not automatically explain the emergence of sub styles with different architectural characteristics. In other words, why did these many individual design decisions form groups and sub styles? The term ‘sub styles’ of course suggests some genealogical relationship with an original set of forms which, of course has to be the case since nothing comes from nothing. This is above and beyond the impact of new building types projected by the Industrial Revolution. Clearly the Developmental period of the dominant consensus would generate differences at the level of individual buildings, after all this is what it was supposed to do in applying a general rule (the dominant paradigm) to particular instances (individual buildings) with their very different contexts. But, given the dynamics of the exchange between many different architects and the time scale involved, this could never be a simple linear process where all architects would make the same selective choices or combine forms in the same way; all moving along in step so to speak. No, this development would be more like the evolutionary growth of a tree where different branches of this same consensus, different cultural or geographic niches would emerge and grow depending on local conditions and realities. The result could only be the emergence of groups of styles clearly related to one another but also clearly different. They would be similar in the sense of recognizing the logic of the Modern, yet different in the sense of identifying and using elements drawn from the deep memory of the past; of different ways of doing the same thing. 3.7A Vast Array of Possibilities Memory is the key issue here. Not the vague, shifting and variable images of the human mind, but rather the concrete images of the City. There, in the buildings built in the past lay the memory of architecture and the imitative source of future projects. What else did architects have to create future projects other than these literally memorable projects? These projects were however differentiated by the cultural and geographic conditions within which they were created. To add to this complexity one can also point to the built-in drive to differentiate one building from another and the elaboration of form that this process produced. The Baroque emerges from Renaissance clarity by this elaborative process of differentiating one building from another. But which Baroque offered authentic imitative sources, Italian, English or French amongst others? Even in the 18th century architects were knowledgeable about goings on in foreign parts given the availability of superbly illustrated volumes of foreign works. In other words here we have the reality of architecture with its deep structure, sediment upon sediment, layer upon layer of almost similar works all prostrate, visible and available across the City; a vast array of possibilities to be tested and incorporated into individual works. The Baroque itself breaks down into a series of options with the intrusion of supposed purifications such as Neo-Classical and so on and so on, each layering itself on the City. From this one can see that sub styles are an inevitable product of architectural history in the sense that architects select, adapt and combine from a whole series of historically derived groups of forms which may evolve from some original decisive event in architectural history. The architecture of any period therefore can only be a product of multiple images and multiple groups of images with their own vocabulary of forms and grammar. The original paradigm is in there alright, defining the general vocabulary of choices and their grammar but, inevitably it recedes into a distant memory. What replaces it is an unyielding complexity of images built up over time by the recursive application of the same select, adapt and combine operations by many architects, the same process that triggered the original paradigm in the first place and which successively elaborated on that idea to produce a series of versions based on the original idea. Complicated? Of course, since the past can only be made up of dense layers of individual experiments, the interchange between these many individuals, the difference between different cultural and geographic conditions and the endless churning of these forms by the relentless activity of architects selecting and combining their different forms. 3.8Involution: Architecture Reflecting on Itself Architects, looking back at the past for adaptable forms did not see a vast array of individual projects but, rather a vast array of groups of projects each circling around some version of the original style. This is the nature of a network of agents, temporarily clustering around some distinct set of forms then shifting to or producing another. All this, of course takes place within a stable and continuous socioeconomic system which is seemingly immortal. (Change these conditions, change the system of patronage, change the kind of building types required by a different socioeconomic system and these networks of agents would dissolve and rearrange themselves). This dense network of individual experiments and groups of sub styles exemplifies the Involutionary phase of an architecture. There are more answers than there are problems and architects reference the sub styles which lie between them and the original set of forms which generated the architecture in the first place and which had been buried under layers of experiment and clusters of such experiments. With Involution, architecture turns in on itself and becomes (as suggested above) self reflexive, fragmenting into several different versions of versions of the original paradigm. The richness and virtuosity of the products produced during this period is not at issue here. Architects were just as creative or incompetent as they were in any other period of history. What is of interest here is the fragmentation of the original consensus and, given that, the possibility of a resort to more exotic forms. ‘Exotic’ here in the case of the Modern might refer to the architecture of the non-Western world extricating itself from the post war, post colonial world. Involution opens architecture up to a massive experiment in creativity; so many options, so many choices including reference to that now mythical origin in the Modern Movement. Theoretically, this Involutionary state of affairs could go on forever generating ever more diverse, elaborate and decorative solutions to the same set of problems. There was no reason why this state of affairs should not continue other than the possibility of a seismic change in the socioeconomic system which would generate building types which the Involutionary state simply could not deal with. The result would again be the dissolution of these sub styles and the re-setting of the whole architectural system. Again, in Involutionary conditions attempts at a stylistic ‘purification’ of architecture would simply add to the confusion of styles already there, after all this would simply mean another style. Motivated and conscious attempts to resolve the complexity of architecture by the avant garde would be futile. Meanwhile architecture in the current socioeconomic system over which it has no control would grow even more dense and complex. Involution is the end phase of an architecture. 4.0Postmodern architecture as Involution. What would Involution mean in terms of Modern architecture? Like other architectures it could only mean in the first place the disintegration of the original consensus into a series of sub styles and a progressive elaboration and decoration of individual projects. The systemic reasons for this have been discussed above. But, in terms of the Modern what would these sub styles look like and equally what aspect of the Modern did they exemplify because there was no way that they could escape their origins in that binary of Classicism or the Free Plan. 4.1The Involutionary World In the Involutionary world all things become possible in terms of combination and recombination of selected forms. The whole world of architectural form opens up. Why not? What was being played out was not a limited selection from the clean forms of the Modern but from versions of versions of that distant memory. While the glass box International style still spread its forms across the world from New York to Jakarta as a very specific and context free solution to a very specific type of problem other architectural types were being tested out and drawn from a much more diverse set of precedents. In the Involutionary world architectural history and its forms now provided a giant warehouse of formal possibilities as the strictures of the Modern receded into memory. This was not an unusual occurrence after all. In that previous Involutionary period in the 19th century all sorts of exotic sources of architecture had been called into play to provide some unique image or other, Moghul, Chinese, strange Gothicky forms which had never existed other than in the imagination of individual architects. So too was the prevalence of the most exotic decorative devices to make it appear that this architecture still had something different to say. Decoration being the ultimate improvisational technique designed to make it appear that buildings, no matter how similar in their fundamentals were actually different. This was illusion in the literal and symbolic sense. Everything was possible with the effective demise of the dominant paradigm. The same process could only occur with the demise of the Modern. The warehouse of the past opens up to selection and combination. Of course, the Modern is still very much there in terms of organization and technology. This was unavoidable really since this Involutionary architecture was a child of the Modern with its rationalism and it’s functionalism. Gone were the tripartite division of spaces demanded by Classicism, the overtly historicist decorative forms and the obscure dispositional rules which dictated the overall form of buildings. Now with multidirectional axes and, with concrete frame technology, the most pragmatic arrangement of forms were now the norm. After all the Developmental period had pushed the boundaries of the Modern and what it could do. Pushed it and pushed it till it could encompass the whole range of possible building types. At the same time this Developmental push to customize unique solutions for a multitude of problems and, thereby confirm the validity of the Modern could not help but paradoxically lead to a fragmentation of the Modern consensus into a number of sub styles each focused on some cultural or historical set of circumstances or even some revisionist ideological view of the Modern itself. Yet still, the Modern with its functionalism and its rationalism lay underneath them all as an irresistible armature which in some way or other locked these diverse styles together as the progeny of the Heroic period. 4.2Same Processes, Different Results So, there is this Modernist, functionalist armature and there are the improvisations which allow it to be applied to particular circumstances. Improvisations which, as usual in a network tend to cluster around various geographical, cultural or intellectual niches as architects exchange and combine the experience of other architects. Inevitably, the language evolves itself out of a consensus and into a series of equally valid group solutions suitable for particular social or cultural niches. The tendency during this Involutionary period is towards diversity of solutions even for the same programmatic problems. Again, there are more solutions than there are problems. Contrast this with the emergence of the Modern where the tendency was towards a reduction of the number of possible solutions to any given problem. The same communication and exchange between architects, the same selection, adaptation and combination of forms resulted in a narrowing of the architectural spectrum towards a single universal set of forms applicable to all problems. Now, in the Involutionary period of the Modern these same architectural processes result in an increase in the number of solutions for any given problem. Nothing new had been added to the processes whereby architects designed particular buildings; no new perceptions or processes had been incorporated into architects’ repertoire, yet, there it was, the very same processes produce very different end results. The answer to this apparent conundrum was, of course the conditions within which these same processes would take place. In the case of the emergence of the Modern, the conditions were already diverse with a multitude of different styles consistent with the fragmentation of the Classical consensus. Given this, the only way to go was towards a unification of architectural form around a single clear cut idea and a universal set of forms which could be applied to any and all problems. The need for this seemingly radical position was not appreciated until the Industrial Revolution generated a vast array of different building types which demanded an economy of effort, in other words a unification of architecture around a limited number of clearly defined forms. In one case architecture has to deal with a diversity of forms which it must reduce to a single set of forms which can be applied to all possible problems while in the Involutionary phase of the Modern this same single set of forms would be diversified into a variable group of context-dependent forms. From diversity to unity to diversity of expression, architecture evolves through these stages conditioned by the current socioeconomic system. One must note however that even the stability of the economic systems over long periods of time still produce architectural innovation. So many architects, so many projects and, in the Involutionary era of the Modern (aka. Postmodern) there emerge several distinct and diverse architectural sub styles each derived from some particular ideological or cultural niche. 5.0The Fragmentation of the Modern The following provides a list of such sub styles which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. One must not assume the permanence of these styles as later developments would show. They might well have been or would be temporary effusions flickering across the architectural spectrum in the wake of the breakdown of the great consensus. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the emergence of these more or less temporary constructions which sought to provide an alternative to the fading fortunes of the Modern. Historicism This sub style draws its inspiration and some of its forms from history and tradition. In fact most of these historical references were based on classical types and (unsurprisingly) from Late Renaissance models with their complex decorative motifs. Needless to say these exercises in nostalgia simply involved the application of Classical motifs to essentially Modern buildings. This, so it was said would make these buildings at least visually more complex and ‘interesting’ as against the diagrammatic forms of functionalist architecture which lacked the tactile or even emotional dimension of past architectures. No matter what its advocates would say, this was, of course just a decorative exercise since such buildings were organized and built according to the latest organizational and technological principles. For instance, when a modern office tower with its ring of offices and a central core of lifts and services is wrapped with Renaissance detailing, one can be assured that this is a decorative exercise. The Renaissance aspect of the building offers nothing but wallpaper to the reality of the building. Columns, capitals, pilasters, articulated wall surfaces, monumental front elevations and rich materials in full colour offered an image of a golden classical past. A past full of texture and colour so it would seem which can be wallpapered on to modern buildings to give them a superficial complexity. The fact that these spectacular Renaissance monuments were few and far between and limited to powerful institutional buildings did not matter. They offered powerful models for future use. And yet, and yet, classicism was everywhere. The 19th and 20th City was almost completely classical apart from a number of Gothically-inspired churches and institutional buildings. The public buildings and even mass housing such as the tenements were classically inspired with their architraves and aedicules and articulated stone surfaces so the classical past was not alien to architects. They had been born and brought up in the midst of this classical environment but, even so out of pure pragmatism understood and accepted the Modernist changes that were taking place in the architectural sphere. While it was possible to criticise the superficiality of this historicist style in the midst of rapid technological change, it was also possible to sympathise with the complaint that Modern architecture indeed lacked the visual texture and complexity of previous architectures. One only needed to walk around cities built in the 19th century to recognize that fact. Even the most ordinary buildings were visually complex. The fact that this was the result of the most extreme decorative artifice was beside the point. They were interesting and the models proposed by Modern architecture – the White architecture - were less so. In this the critics of the Modern were right – and wrong. The issue was not some fundamental principle of architecture, right and wrong architectures, it was solely a matter of Development. In other words a matter of time before an architecture developed the vocabulary which could expressively handle any and all projects. Nobody could know that at the time According to some of the more extreme historicist architects Modern design was a fundamentally wrong or inappropriate style for this or any other age; an aberration. For them, it is not just the International Style phase which must be rejected, but everything, all the way back to and before the Heroic Age of the 1920s. They would also say that the functionalist/rationalist process of Modern design (the way it works) inevitably produces hostile and oversimplified environments and objects. Again, mistakenly they would also point to the fact that Modern Design rejected history and tradition and the lessons of the past in order to create a wholly new (and untried) style. This was wrong in the sense that the Modern was an explicit extension of the 19th century. Lacking an historical perspective many architects would point to the success, complexity and humanity of traditional cities, interior spaces and architecture - in which people prefer to live. The fact that most of these cities were rat-infested slums were, of course ignored by middle class critics. Neo-Modern Here, in this sub style we have the promise of the Modern. The implication was that the Modern in its early stages had not been allowed for reasons of war or economic recession to develop to its full potential of providing a beautiful and rational environment. It takes the ideas of the early Modern Movement - the `White Architecture' of the 1920s - stretches and develops it to make it more complex. Using the most advanced building technology available at the time the Neo Modern shows how a fully developed but admittedly derivative Modernism can handle any degree of internal complexity and external expressiveness. Richard Meier the American architect best known for this style. takes the simple white boxes of the 1920s and breaks them open, making them more expressive. Within these volumes there are the multiple-height spaces, ramps, stairs, columns, curved elements and pure geometric volumes. If ever there was a reprise of the Corbusian aesthetic this was it. It was almost a High Tech aluminium version of Le Corbusier’s work which was limited by the technology of the 1950s to a rough, but evocative concrete. This shift to precision elements was what the PostModern could really mean in the sense of taking the elemental forms of the Modern and generalizing them into a coherent vocabulary. The implicit geometry of the cube and the cylinder controlled the overall disposition of spaces and gave such a building a ready-made coherence. White is used for all walls, ceilings and structural elements. It is the furniture paintings, carpets and domestic products which provide strong colour elements in the interior. The white edges of the space become simply a neutral background to human activities. Apart from the textureless surfaces, Le Corbusier would have at least understood the logic of the building.   Given its provenance from the Heroic period, one would expect this style to resonate across the architectural spectrum and trigger a new wave of ‘Heroic’ experiments. This did not happen since by this time in the 1970s it was simply one style jostling amongst many others in this period of fragmentation of the Modern. 5.3Pop Architecture Here, popular familiar forms derived from the explosion of consumerist culture in the post war period provide another repertoire of forms that could individualise buildings and connect the High Art of architecture with the ‘man on the street’. The intellectual origins of this style can be traced to Robert Venturi and his book: ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’ and his other book: ‘Learning from Las Vegas’. These plus the work of Venturi, Moore, the theorist Colin Rowe, the critic Charles Jencks and the Italian movement of the 1980s founded by the designer, Ettore Sottsass and his Memphis design Group rejected the functionalist and `neutral' concepts of the International Style. Venturi and Sottsass and others sought to reintroduce the qualities of colour, texture, sensuality and joy into design which had been lost or abandoned by the functionalist approach of the 1950s and the supposed puritan ethic of the Modern Movement.   Later conceptions of the Pop imagery occur in the work of Michael Graves’ work for the Disney Corporation including the use of six (yes, six) dwarfs as ‘caryatids’ or ‘Hermes’ on the front elevation holding up a stone faced monumental pediment backed by a massive cylindrical core. Here one has a remarkable mixture of historicism (Roman associations) and populism (the movies). Its no surprise that much of this populist imagery was derived from Los Angeles, home of the movies, hot dog stand and donuts. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic saw in these popular and transitory events a way of incorporating popular culture into architecture – the high art. Theoretically here was a way of integrating the tastes of the masses with architecture, the elite art. It was of course nonsense since it was the corporations that financed both the movies and the architecture. So too this architecture of the masses with its dwarfs and donuts. Of course the architects who created these works and the critics who gave it a spurious significance hid behind a shield of ‘irony’. ‘No, we didn’t really mean it. It was a joke’. A billion dollar, concrete, steel and stone joke. Yet, apart from the massive corporate fake populism realized in Graves’ works, the idea of incorporating popular or familiar elements into Modern design certainly had an authenticity or coherence as an architectural idea. One could for instance note especially in European design circles an anti-intellectual/anti-functionalist approach to product, graphics and furniture design which rejected the snobbish approach of design professionals to 'good taste' which produces neutral, characterless products. This populism provided an avenue where familiar and non-intellectual images from popular culture could enter and influence Modern design products and, by using shock to widen the range of images of Modern design by introducing conflicting or irregular colours, patterns, textures, shapes and mixed materials. These colours, patterns and textures did not come from nowhere. They were already there, certainly in the 1960s in the clothes and interior furnishings of the mass of the populations where spontaneity, colour, texture, sensuality, joy and fun funneled through the movies and, now colour television had already ousted the drab, black, white and greys of the post war world. The experiments of Sottsass and Andy Warhol injected colour into the post war world of design including architecture but that same architecture was already in a state of fragmentation and open to vernacular influence. The myth of the cubic, white architecture of the 1920s was long gone. Here again there is this desire or impetus to elaborate or complexify that basic Modern paradigm. Why? Because architecture had nowhere else to go other than towards a more complex state driven by a continual play of architectural experiments. 5.4High Tech Design The promise of technology. Given the power of technology because of and after the war all things were possible. It also seemed that the problems of architecture were not stylistic at all but, rather a refusal to apply the full weight of technology and rationalism to these problems. Rather than completely reject the work of the Modern Movement, certain designers sought to push some of its ideas to their limits. In this case - building technology. High Tech designers made two basic claims: that design can be reduced to purely technical issues: structures and services (An extreme version of the Modern Movement Functionalism) and that this advanced technology could provide a neutral and flexible environment – a convenient space within which the users can create their own lifestyles. On this basis the High Tech environment becomes a highly-serviced shed within which all partitions are movable and services are shifted to the edges of the building freeing up a vast flexible space where anything could take place. In theory at least the building is `invisible' and simply provides a protective shell within which the users can do what they like. The major design effort is directed at integrating the services and structure and freeing the internal space. One can list the characteristics of High Tech Design as follows: full expression of technical apparatus: structure/services - columns/ducts etc., emphasis on complexity of detailing, large areas of glass and pressed metal walling, ,bright colours identifying different structural/service systems, structure and services placed outside of the shell (visually, this gives the building a complex appearance), use of `high tech' materials: steel, glass, plastics. However, one must note the determination of this style to rigorously express the services apparatus, to elaborate on it and, indeed to celebrate it. If the interior space was open, neutral and available for any and all activities, the ‘thick wall’ of lifts, stairs, toilets, ventilation ducts and other technical paraphernalia defined exactly the ideology of the building.   While High Tech designers claimed that their buildings were directed to solving technical issues, their buildings tell a different story. As much as any other movement their work generated visual complexity by using complex and exposed technical detailing and arrangement plus in some cases colour to produce a more interesting environment. But, to be fair these architects were indeed attempting to solve specific problems with certain technical means. They did not deliberately seek a more complex end product any more than Baroque architects did, but their efforts, apparatus and ideology could only result in a more visually complex end product. But this is case as with all Involutionary movements where there was a ratchet effect where later versions of the same product were much more complicated than the earlier versions. This, of course defines the shift from Development to Involution.   The work of the British architects: Norman Foster and Richard Rogers exemplifies the Hi Tech approach to architecture. Foster's building, the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong is without doubt the classic example of this style. However, way out on the edges of the norm the work of Shin Takamatsu in Japan shows a more theatrical approach to the expression of technology. In his work the technical elements become sculptural elements and the whole suggests an extremely sci-fi inspired environment. In this case we are in the realms of theatre on a gigantic scale quite in accordance with the tenor of the Involutionary and Baroque phase of the Modern. 5.5Regionalism With the end of the world war and the gradual reconstruction of non-western societies there was this possibility even in the face of the massive intrusion of Western capitalism, its culture and its architecture of creating or re-creating an indigenous architecture; an architecture derived in some sense from the traditional forms and ethos of the past but equally manipulating the technology and even the forms of the Modern movement. The rapid economic development of certain parts of the world, particularly East Asia, Latin America and Southern Europe has dramatized the issue of Regional identity and identity was the key issue here. The key issues of Regional design are these: the overpowering cultural/technical and economic influence of Western (primarily American) culture on other societies and the desire to protect and maintain the unique culture and identity of non-Western societies. However, the systemic disintegration of the Modern Movement into a variety of different styles freed regional designers from an overpowering Modern template and allowed them the cultural space to produce work based on local motifs and local perceptions of space, materials and colour. The question was how to produce an authentic regional style since there were many buildings in which the regional aspect was entirely superficial; where the interior of a basically Modern building is simply decorated with local motifs somewhat like the application of historicist motifs to Modern buildings in the West. The Middle East had many examples like this, hotels being the obvious example. One of the most successful attempts to produce an indigenous and authentic style was Japan particularly in the work of Kenzo Tange, Arata Isozaki, Tadeo Ando, Shin Takamatsu, Kurokawa and the interior designer Yasuo Kondo. With a full understanding of traditional Buddhist or Shinto spatial concepts and detailing techniques, Japanese designers transformed their buildings into identifiably modern and yet recognizably Japanese evocative design events. It was not only the large, Modern clean cut elements which resonated with the curvature and ‘stacking’ of Japanese classical roofs, nor the delicacy of the sun screens which locked whole elevations together echoing the sliding partitions of previous architectures. No, there was this telling detail which fused Modern building technology to the necessities of creating an indigenous Modern architecture. Japanese industry in the post war world had developed quickly to the point where concrete, a rough and ready material in the West had become a precision instrument in the hands of Japanese architects. So precise that detailing allowed precast elements to be locked together like timber sections from the Japanese classical past. Here we have an interesting historical parallel between Greek and Japanese architectures. The earliest Greek architecture of timber construction had at some point been translated into marble. In the most literal sense that translation incorporated the full expression of the characteristics of timber detailing: the pediment, metopes, dentiles, all derived from their timber construction ancestry. There, in the form and detailing of classical marble temples lay the memory of the pre-classical past. Nothing had been lost. So too with the sublimated expression of Japanese architecture and detailing did Modern Japanese architects translate their traditional forms into the most evocative Modern vocabulary. To be clear, this was not an exercise in sentimentality on the part of Japanese architects. Their task, their very specific task, was to fix Modern universal forms into a particular time and place; in this case Japan with its own rich architectural culture. In 1964 and the Olympic games, Kenzo Tange showed that Japanese architecture could express the most radical, functional and beautiful forms. In this case and so many others it was made clear that this was Japan and that these spaces expressed Japanese characteristics and expressed the identity of that place and time. So too with Latin America. There, for architects who were culturally aware, there was this same task: to express the Modern with an indigenous vocabulary. Vocabulary, grammar, there they were, the structure and its content, logic and its application. The point was to pull this universal logic of the Modern into the making of recognizable and familiar spaces and places. For Latin American architecture indigenous elements involved the wall that surrounded the courtyard house, colour and the landscape and the timber screens that shaded patios from the fierce sunlight but allowed shadow to further intensify the interior spaces. So too the textural paving to the courtyards and interior spaces which added to the tactile characteristics of this displaced Mediterranean ambience. Here was this architecture which sought to create an environment a million miles away from the diagrammatic and textureless features of the classic Modern of the 1920s and 30s; an architecture specific to a particular time, place, culture and a blazing sun. Here was a geographical and cultural niche within which the Modern had to settle and in so settling produced a coherent sub-species of the Modern. In this respect one can note the work of Louis Barragan and, later Ricardo Legorreta and Emilio Ambaz amongst others. Equally in Southern Europe with the work of Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi, Ricardo Bofill and later, Mario Botta the same need to establish or re-establish an indigenous architecture but one equipped with a Modern sense of organization and the technology to implement it. Driven by the power of post war capitalism, Modern architecture slides across different cultures but in many cases the result is not the total homogenization of architecture. Those days were over. The elaboration of form during the Developmental period and the consequent fragmentation of the Modern consensus meant that many things were possible. Each cultural and geographical niche could in theory develop a legitimate version of this theoretical Modern and, more significantly could write it out in indigenous terms. That is, in terms of the local spatial, motif, colour and ambience of local architectures. Again, this is not a question of sentimentality or wallpapering cultural characteristics on to Modern buildings. The question was what the term and the concept ‘Modern’ now meant. Did it mean the importation of undiluted Western models across the globe or could it now be deciphered simply as a recipe, a high level program which could be applied to specific geographic and cultural circumstances? Of course it could only mean the latter given the gradual disintegration of the Modern consensus. In other words, there was no longer a canonical set of characteristics which could be parachuted into different cultures. What then did the concept ‘Modern’ mean given that it no longer offered a clear cut set of models applicable to any situation. What it now meant of course was dictated by a memory of the original ideology. Namely, the pragmatic distribution of spaces, cubic geometry, specialization of functions, the free plan, the right angle, the faux metallic surfaces, the tight 2-dimensional surfaces of the elevation, a rejection of cultural memory in favour of seemingly mechanistic approach to all problems. However, in the Involutionary phase of the Modern – the PostModern as it was called - there was no need or desire for such a ritualistic design approach. In a sense everywhere was specific so where would these universal models fit in? The answer was nowhere. The collapse of the Modern consensus during the Developmental field with its elaboration and decoration of all solutions opened a window to local solutions. There was a memory of the Modern of course and its program, but now it could be written out in indigenous terms.   The forms produced by these architects and designers amongst others are now used to enrich the whole vocabulary of international Modern architecture and design. They offer another set of motifs, attitudes and design alternatives which are based on human and non-functionalist approaches to environments. While absorbing the technology of advanced industrial society, Regional designers humanize it with details and spatial organization drawn from the collective memory and history of the people who will use it and in a true sense they `customize' the design so that it truly belongs somewhere. Eclectic This is not just the unconscious, inadvertent mix of different styles or the result of simple incompetence on the part of architects or some subjective combination of disparate stylistic parts. It is, rather a conscious attempt to merge carefully selected elements together to provide a rich set of associations within a particular and unique context. And this carefully selected set could come from anywhere within the vast warehouse of Western architectural forms; Roman, Medieval or Modern. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the forms so selected were useful and evocative in the context where they were placed. But why would an architect in the mid 20th century choose Roman forms amongst others to organize their buildings? Why not? The whole Involutionary period allowed just that since the lines between what could not and what could be done had been blurred after the continual customization of the Developmental period. While the canonical forms and formative rules of the Modern like the Super Ego still hovered above current architecture, at ground level all things were possible in order to get the job done and that job was to materialize a particular institution in built form. The formal vocabulary used to effect that end result had become entirely pragmatic and stretched further back than the origins of the Modern. There had simply been too many individual experiments, too many buildings to design in that great rush of rebuilding after the war and the boom time of the Capitalist economies in the 50s and 60s to hold back the dissolution of the Modern, which after all had originated in the grey, depression period of the 20s and 30s. Here were two different environments, one of limited resources and one of abundant resources. The end result was inevitable; the elaboration of form in architecture to the point where it split into several styles or sub styles which could quite easily refer to any and every architectural vocabulary available and there were many. If every vocabulary even from the distant past were accessible and available then particular elements suited to particular contexts could be selected. This Eclectic style (and it is a style) attempts to reintroduce the richness of multiple forms, materials, colours and textures which infused architecture and design in the 19th century with a clear-reference and incorporation of Modern forms. One must distinguish this from the supposedly ironic forms of Graves’ Disney building or his Portland Insurance building. The latter is an essentially decorative exercise on otherwise standard modern buildings while Eclecticism, for instance in the work of James Stirling’s work is not at all decorative and detail-orientated but centered on the mass, geometry, organization and, ultimately the former and current use and usefulness of the selected forms to create an integrated whole.   As the name implies, Eclecticism incorporates materials, forms, uses and associations from several sources within any given design as necessary. Thus one could include historicist associations, constructivist elements, pop colours and materials, modernist shapes. This is exactly what the architect James Stirling did in his design for the Museum and Art Gallery in Stuttgart, Germany. The result is of course a complex work where the massive volume of the work reminiscent of Roman or Neoclassical elements is textured and detailed with modernist colours shapes, material and the associations of other styles and times. There is a recognition of the freedom of choice allowed by the Involutionary phase of Modern architecture. The point here is that the forms of different styles could be seen and identified in the whole complex not as some ad hoc or mistaken collision of forms but rather as a carefully chosen selection of elements each with its unique historically-based characteristics performing a very specific role in the whole ensemble. Here, in a conscious , competent and wholly unsentimental approach lay the best of the Involutionary period with its coherent combination of memory, mass, colour and detail. In Stirling’s work at least there is no Disneyesque and arbitrary combination of forms notable in Grave’s work. There is, rather an attempt to synthesis in a particular place and time the wonders of Western architecture and design; that big warehouse of possibilities opened up by the advent of the Involutionary-Postmodern period. All things were now possible. 5.7Deconstructivism   One might suggest that the fragmentation of the Modern into several apparently different styles or parallel architectures in the Involutionary phase could be seen in some way as a ‘return of the repressed’. That is, when Modern architecture became the dominant species it effectively relegated or marginalized others (historicism, eclecticism, the vernacular, structural rationalism, regionalism) to a secondary or subservient role. It should be remembered that there always several styles in existence at any one time defined by geographical or cultural niches. In a psychological sense the now dominant style repressed these styles as unwanted memories and behaviours which interrupted the clarity of the Modern intervention in society. Equally, when the Modern as a distinct style began to dissolve in the 1960s in a Developmental wave which lessened its formal and intellectual impact and opened up the possibility of alternative solutions to architectural problems then these repressed and marginalized styles offered just such alternatives. After all, architects could not just come up with spontaneous solutions and if they did they would be considered meaningless. Alternatives to the Modern had to come from some existing vocabularies which could be customized to suit current conditions and there they were: the repressed and pre-Modern memories of architecture. So now for architecture there were at last a wider range of choices that could be made to reflect the complexity and the situational dynamics of new projects. Thus the return of the repressed. These ‘minority’ styles offered a whole set of vocabularies with which to express the endless number of new projects which the economic boom period of the 1960s demanded. Yet each of these marginal styles contested some particular aspect of the Modern whether it be the use of historical forms or a casual and eclectic use of different styles. These sub styles, historicism, eclecticism, technological fetishism and regionalism each reflected some aspect of what the Modern had rejected as non-canonical: memory, regional identity, improvisation and the over-elaborate expression of technology. Then there is Deconstructivism as another challenger to the canonical forms of the Modern. But what was this challenge? It was an attempt to subvert the supposed rationalism of the Modern; the very basis of its legitimacy. Along with the other Postmodern styles, from the 1970s onwards, Deconstructivism criticized and sought to remedy some particular aspect of the performance of Modern Architecture. In this case it sought to question whether this architecture could fully express the complexity of any design problem. It had become clear that the universality of the Modern could not deal with the immediate and the local and could not express the complexity of local circumstances with its simple platonic formulae of right angle, cube and pristine surfaces. For the International Style for instance all design problems could theoretically be solved within these precise cubic spaces and the requisite technology. This simplistic platonic formula gave Modern Movement spaces a spurious monumentality, certainty and rationalism. Regional styles on the other hand had sought to reinstate colour, texture and, ultimately, local identity into Modern architecture. Was that enough in the face of the rationalism and functionalism of the Modern because it could be seen as simply decorative? The philosophical question in architecture was therefore whether these cubic forms in themselves could express the innate complexity of many projects. At its simplest the question was what kind of architecture could break open these closed forms of the Modern and reveal and express the complexity of things? Equally, what kind of architecture could, by its very nature express complexity and yet maintain its coherence? Deconstructivism set out to do exactly that. What could possibly be the reason behind a style which appears to distort, twist, bend and destroy the conventional (ie. orthogonal) shape of buildings and to dissolve any obvious relationship between the function of the building and its form? For this is what Deconstructivism seemed to do. Why should such a style come into existence in the first place. There is a fairly clear source for the origins of such a movement and this comes from outside the area of architecture and design and lies in the field of Freudian psychology where Freud noticed that in order to deal with traumas and painful memories the patients repressed them. That is, pushed them out of their conscious mind - tried to forget them. But the patients’ behaviour endlessly circled around these traumas and led to strange or unorthodox behaviour. Freud’s view was that if he could get the patient to reveal these traumatic events to themselves they would in a sense cure themselves.  Freud's way of doing this was to get the patients to talk about themselves and through the clues he found in their conversation reveal the deeply repressed source of their problems now buried in their unconscious mind (the 'talking cure'). In other words Freud set out to 'deconstruct' the speech of his patients in order to find the repressed source of their anxiety which, once identified and opened up for discussion would resolve the problem.   In the 1960s the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida who had studied the work of Freud, developed and began to apply this deconstructive technique to the study of philosophical texts. Whereas Freud had listened to what his patients had to say, Derrida analysed what other people WROTE, but with the same purpose in mind. That is to reveal the repressed ideas which underlay the apparently smooth, elegant and well-constructed arguments put forward by other philosophers. He wanted to find the inconsistencies in their ideas by analysing the way they wrote them: again the figures of speech they used and the way they avoided certain topics which might contradict the coherence of the model of experience which they had put forward. Derrida believed that no theory could pretend to be absolutely consistent, logical or present itself as a self-contained and whole system. If it did, it could only do so by hiding or repressing something which did not fit its view of things.   He looked for clues in the text which betrayed these hidden or repressed thoughts. He deconstructed the text in order to find them and he also placed contradictory texts and ideas beside each other on the same page to indicate the futility of either claiming absolute authority. By disrupting texts in this way he forced the reader to approach the text (and the ideas behind it) in a more critical and therefore more intelligent way.   The general characteristics and intentions of Deconstructivist design become clear in that it seeks to explode architectural form into loose collections of related fragments and destroy the dominance of the right angle and the cube by using the diagonal line and the `slice' of space. Equally it searches for more dynamic spatial possibilities and experiences not explored (or forbidden) by the Modern Movement and in doing so provoke shock, uncertainty, unease, disquiet, disruption, distortion by challenging familiar ideas about space, order and regularity in the environment. It rejects the idea of the `perfect form' for a particular activity and rejects the familiar relationship between certain forms and certain activities. How did a technique like this come to be applied in the field of design?   To answer this you have to look at the state of architecture in the 1960s/70s.  At that time, there was a general feeling amongst architects and the general public that architecture, then known as the International Style had become inhumane and monotonous and hostile.  Like Freud's patients who saw nothing wrong with their behaviour (though everyone else did) and like the seemingly perfect arguments in the texts analysed by Derrida, there was a fundamentally illogical and inconsistent quality to the 'behaviour' of Modern Architecture no matter how rational it appeared to be. The end result was hostile to the extent that some of the Modern housing projects were being evacuated and blown up. What had gone wrong?   Modern Architecture pretended to be the most rational, technologically advanced and perfectly functional system and to be based entirely on the carefully quantified needs and requirements of its users. At the time there did not seem to be any alternative ways of thinking about architecture other than this 'scientific and rational' approach centred in the Functionalist tradition of Modern Architecture. Form in this sense was merely an effect, an epiphenomenon of the interaction of stated functions and by some remarkable coincidence that same form somehow always managed to end up as cubic or orthogonal in nature. Modern Architecture presented itself as the perfect model of the human experience which it sought to represent. To do so however it inevitably ignored the sometimes messy, conflicting, contradictory and ambiguous situations that arise in the interaction of many different activities and functions. The model had to appear to be perfect. The fact that it must repress the reality of the experience it represented in order to do so became ever more obvious in the later decades of the 20th century.   The different architectural responses to these increasingly obvious flaws in the ideology of the Modern could be found in the range of new styles which came into fashion in the 1970s described above: Historicism with its outright rejection of Modernism itself; Hi Tech with its belief that all problems could ultimately be resolved by technological means; Regionalism, with its search for cultural identity in traditional forms and other stylistic attempts to break out of the Modernist trap. These styles could also be considered to be fragments of Modernism given independent existence as Modernism itself implodes. Like the others Deconstructivism may be considered to be one of these stylistic fragments of the Modern with its goals being to dissolve the fixed and determined forms of the Modern and reveal the dynamic formal possibilities that lay within the program offered by the institution and its context.  At the same time there was a denial that architects could produce some perfectly authentic representation of the program and its context which by the nature of things were always unstable and in flux. Here we have a final rejection of the Functionalist tradition that had driven the Modern from its beginnings. In a sense the relationship between the program and its resulting form were coincidental: a chance meeting of the interacting activities of the institution, always in flux, with the state of the architectural language and technology at the time and, as usual, there was this obsessive attempt to destroy the predominance of the right angle in architecture – that sign of rationalist order and of the predetermined. Deconstructivism sought to reveal those forms, possibilities and approaches that Modern Architecture had repressed in order to become 'perfect' by creating apparently illogical clashes of grids, spaces and volumes - breaking open the form of buildings.    Ideas such as these were arrived at by some European and American architects who were familiar with Derrida's work particularly Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman. The key concept in both the philosophical and architectural ideologies of the Postmodern centred on the rejection of fixed models, schemas, grand meta-narratives or other ‘total’ explanations of any sort on the assumption that the clarity and order which they portray is built on a repression of the real diversity and heterogeneity of things.  In other words, it is a lie. Form, in the sense of a representation of things, must, in this ideology reflect the infinite plurality and flux of experience. In architecture if this meant a dissolution of visual order, then so be it, for after all that order, which had sustained Western civilization for so long as a similarity between things, was a completely inauthentic representation of experience.  Modern Architecture had not allowed the expression of contradictions. That is, conflicts of function between different spaces. Everything had to look unified, smooth and well organized: a whole and perfect machine. The Deconstructivist approach  sought  to reveal these contradictions - to bring them into the open and, in effect to make them happen (even if they did not exist!).   The effect of Deconstructivist philosophy was therefore to detach architecture from 'function' as such and to allow a 'free play' of design. In a sense to make architecture and design a 'pure' art. It might solve some of the functional problems some of the time but that was not its main purpose because   Deconstructivism would deny any direct relationship between the form and the function of a building.   Architecture’s main task according to some Deconstructivists was the creation of a pure architectural experience, unhindered by function: an architecture of pleasure and joy. Architecture as art. While the brief and the functions may act as a start point for the buildings form, it is not the end point.   In effect of course, architecture here is set up as a parallel reality or ‘discourse’ as the ideologist would have it. This is quite consistent with the position taken by philosophers and sociologists of the same mode, namely reality as a multitude of different, equally-valid and ultimately separate discourses. There is no meta-discourse which ties these things together nor which poses as the dominant form of discourse. Here architectural form becomes a self propelling ‘thing in itself’ and while the program and client may offer a necessary start point, the resulting form is inevitably unpredictable, subject as it is to purely architectural dynamics. It is no surprise that one of the key words in the Deconstructivist lexicon is ‘difference’.   What this produced was the design of buildings where the actual function of the building cannot be easily understood. All that can be seen is the play of forms: intersecting angled beams and the clash of different functionless spaces. Design and function had become separate issues, so too with theory and practice. What is the reality behind all this heavy-weight philosophy and psycho-babble? It is that Deconstructivism has become a fashionable style which is simply different from and perhaps no more 'meaningful' than other styles. What we see is that designers who know nothing about the background to Deconstructivism and care even less, produce what we would 'recognize' as a Decon building. The ultimate test is this, can we tell the difference between a building designed by a card-carrying, fully aware, Deconstructivist architect and a building styled by another designer to look like a Deconstructivist building? The answer is, probably not. It is what the building looks like 'on the ground' so to speak that is the bottom line on this issue. What the designers think they are doing - no matter how 'meaningful' or significant to them - and what they actually do can be seen as two different things. In other words, it does not matter what the designer thinks, it is what he or she produces that is important to us, the users/observers. 6.0The Invisible Hand The Developmental phase of an architecture does what the label suggests. It provides an emergent and somewhat diagrammatic architecture with the formal tools to respond to more complex environments. The reality of this on the ground so to speak means that individual architects must distort or elaborate the canonical forms of the Modern in order to express the individuality of each design project or, more precisely to accurately reflect the reality of these projects, their actual organizational structure and image. During this phase and given the exchange between many architects architecture is, in effect being customized to suit the reality of things and the inherent complexity of institutional relations and the buildings which must express those relations. It is not that individual designs become more sophisticated in the sense that their forms and the buildings themselves suit their contexts more adequately. Architects remain as competent or incompetent as they ever were. What is different now is that the Modern formula simply proved to be inadequate to the semiotic task of expressing the reality of late 20th century buildings. In a sense there was no longer a right or wrong here, competent or incompetent, mediocre or brilliant, the Modern formula itself simply could not supply the range or quality of forms necessary to meet so many different building projects and their unique conditions There was no way that the simple Modernist model could authentically reflect so many different circumstances. While the cubic, functionalist and focused formulae of the Modern and its supposed rationalism stood there at the centre of architectural thinking and in its functionalism giving a kind of freedom to architects to go with the circumstances of each building, its stripped-down, cubic geometry and its colourless, textureless and, essentially abstract formal qualities could never express the textural or organizational reality required by most design projects. So, the customization of these abstract forms began and this is a definition of the Developmental period. It’s worth reiterating that there was no top-down instruction to architects to elaborate upon the forms of their projects. Given that the whole architectural system is a network of individual architects communicating between each other, there was no one or nothing to give such an instruction. In other words, there was no guiding hand unless we recognize the reality of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ which recognizes the unforeseeable effect of exchange between many individual agents. From Elaboration to Fragmentation Freed from the magnetism of the Modern there could only be a continued improvisation of forms combining and re-combining in that great matrix of architectural production. So much creativity, so many solutions to so few problems. Elaboration upon elaboration. Yet to imagine that these exercises existed inside one cultural or geographical domain would be quite wrong; the Modern had become a global phenomenon. The various themes on the Modern displayed by different geographical and cultural domains (described above) added to the growing formal complexity of architecture and in that complexity the original idea of the Modern, its formal purity could only fade into memory. Yet there was no way that this process of disintegration of a dominant paradigm would or could result in the reduction of architecture simply to a massive number of completely different individual buildings. That would mean the end of architecture as the similarity between buildings and the loss of a common language and the information that it brings from past experience. Impossible of course but more significant is that the very processes of architecture, the communication and exchange of experience between architects must inevitably produce groups of similar buildings; styles in fact. To that extent the bottom line in the disintegration of a dominant architecture can only be the formation of sub styles derived from increasingly local interpretations of the ideas of the now defunct dominant architecture. Local here means both geographical in the sense of interpretation of the style by, say Mexican or Indian architects and the cultural or ideological perceptions of the Modern by, say the Hi-Tech or Deconstructivist architects. At one level therefore the emergence of these sub styles could only mean a fragmentation of the Modern but, equally that there were now very different ways of saying the same thing. This is Involution, where there are more answers than there are problems. One need only look at the architecture of the 19th century to see the same formal diversity, the same play upon the diverse interpretations of the classical tradition. After all, the existence of the Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, NeoClassical spoke clearly of the decay of a central directive, a central definition of how to design buildings and the formal means to do so. Again this was Involution; so many ways to do the same thing. They have a choice. While individual buildings would inevitably be different from one another even while using the same formal apparatus, the Involutionary phase of architecture multiplies this quite normal process by giving architects the possibility of selecting from a range of styles for their forms. Architects no longer need to select from a single set of forms to assemble their buildings, Difference is multiplied and the fragmentation of the Modern is emphasized. The Continuity of the Involutionary Phase The Involutionary phase of an architecture assumes that there is enough time to bring about the fragmentation of the dominant consensus into a set of sub styles. A seismic economic shock in a society (war for instance) would completely reset the processes involved and change the whole architectural game in terms of number and kind of building types required. The more obvious question is what happens with the continuity of the Involutionary phase. What else can happen that can noticeably change architectural history? The answer is nothing. In the circumstances of an apparently immortal socioeconomic system, change can only mean more of the same. While there may be a shuffling around of architectural characteristics and an eclectic exchange between these groups, the total result can only be more of the same, namely diversity of architectural expression. *****************