The role of Archinect’s new series Cross-Talk is to bring forward the positive aspects of the polemic and allow for the resulting conflict to bring to life an otherwise still and comfortable climate of creativity—if there can be one. Cross-Talk attempts—if to only say that it did—to allow text the freedom that the image has accepted and embraced. Cross-Talk attempts to force the no, to contradict itself, to anger, to please and then anger again, if only to force a stance, to pull out the position of the self, of the discipline and of the hour as a means to begin and maintain conversations moving forward. 

A Westbound Tale.

Everyone loves a good story about rivalry, about a hero and a villain. David vs Goliath, Spartans vs Persians, Greeks vs Romans, Britain vs New World, Rocky vs Apollo, Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West. Architecture itself has had its fair share of intense rivalries in the course of its autonomous history, with the most recent  being that of East Coast vs West Coast in the context of the United States of America. But how can one take a position in this dilemma when they have not been raised to support one or the other? I am going to try to unpack this from the position of a European who assumes the identity observer of this American Debate instead of an active member of its evolution. For that reason a journey through time might be of essence considering a few of architecture’s past rivalries through a lengthy trip from the Eastern towards the Western ends of what has come to be known as history of “western” architecture in an attempt to find some underlying meaning.

Greece vs Rome: Democracy vs Empire

Rome creates an architecture for a world empire, that can be replicated, adapted and exported to the far ends of its territory.

Let’s start this trip in Ancient Greece (because you kinda always have to) , set as the easternmost point of this imaginary map. The doric, the Ionian, the Corinthian, the arcade, the theater, the agora, the stadium, the Parthenon  and consecutively Classicism was established here in the apex of the Greek democracy during the 5th century B.C. The Romans, located in the westernmost part of the known world at that time, conquer Athens in the 3rd century together appropriating Greek architecture. However, even though the elements of their architecture remain somewhat similar, Rome evolved the Orders by adding the Composite and the Tuscan, making them giant, expanding their repertoire, and created a set of typologies (Forum, Hippodrome, etc) and materialities  that distinguished the two civilizations once and for all at least in the eyes of history.  Rome creates an architecture for a world empire, that can be replicated, adapted and exported to the far ends of its territory.

Italy vs France: In search for the Origins

Further west, the Greco-Roman debate (yes, I know Europe was kinda obsessed with this beloved duo), emerges once again in the 18th century, in the context of the Enlightenment and the search for truth and origin. However, the rivalry this time is not between the Greeks and the Romans, but rather French and the Italians respectively. Specifically, the debate concentrates around France’s attempt to announce the Athens as the beginning of all architecture, as to them not only did it symbolize the way the Noble Savage construct the primitive hut, but also an architecture that was created from the first democracy of the world. Such attempts have been made by Marc-Antoine Laugier’s “Essai sur l'architecture”, Quatremère De Quincy’s additions on architecture to the French Encyclopedia, but mostly relevant to this story La Roi’s “Les Ruines des plus beaux Monuments de la Grèce” in 1758. The rivalry becomes apparent when the architect and (of course) archaeologist Giovanni Battista Piranesi challenges La Roi’s essay’s basic premise, that all Roman architecture is copious of Greek architecture without ever reaching its level. Piranesi advocated for the Etruscan civilization as the precedent for all Roman creation which was, according to him more perfected and thought of as a total work of art. Without saying who was wrong or right, one thing could be said about the results of each side of the argument. The French resurrected and transformed Greek architecture into French Neoclassicism, whereas Piranesi’s ideas remained in magical montages in that only showed his version of the potential of Roman architecture in his “Parere”.

France vs Chicago: Palace vs Skyscraper

...architects trained in the Beaux-Arts like Louis Sullivan attempt to change adapt and evolve the lessons learned from France in this new way of building that was not a matter of art but of business.

France and specifically the Ecole des Beaux Artes in Paris, with the leadership of Henri Labrouste, developed a disdain for the French Neoclassicism that lead to the creation of a truly national architecture that would govern the nation’s monuments and palaces, based on the French and Italian Baroque and Rococo with an emphasis on symmetry, overscaled detailing and decoration, vistas and calculated perspectives. The Beaux Artes, eventually made its way to the west in the New World from American Architects who studied in Paris like Richard Morris Hunt and Henry Hobson Richardson and Charles Follen McKim with notable buildings such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Low Memorial Library in New York. However at the end of 19th century, the invention of the elevator and the use of steel in the building construction as well as the radical need for commercial large scale buildings gave birth to the skyscraper.  The buildings that the Beaux-Arts movement influenced were typically much shorter and broader than any skyscraper, and it was difficult to accurately reproduce the style in a tall, narrow building. Thus architects trained in the Beaux-Arts like Louis Sullivan attempt to change adapt and evolve the lessons learned from France in this new way of building that was not a matter of art but of business.

Europe vs East Coast: Manifesto vs Style

A few years later, in the beginning of the 20th Century,  Europe and the US come at it again as the protagonists of the rivalry. Modern architecture comes as a denial of the Beaux-Arts and Neoclassicism. It’s a movement that represents industry, repetition, fast construction, and mass appeal in the form of an architecture that intended to combat the unhealthy environments of European cities and the lack of housing in the beginning and the middle of the century (whether it did or not).  Inevitably Modernism immigrated to the United States where in 1932 it transforms from a type of architecture that represents a cultural shift to a style with Henry Russell Hitchcock’s and Philip Johnson’s exhibition at New York’s MOMA titled “International Style”. Through the exhibition it becomes quite evident that this new “style” intends to distance itself from every and all bagage from European mid-century misery and be sold as a product, yet another way for the consumer to become more “modern”. Removing modern architecture from its original politically intense context, allowed for differentiation, and explorations of form not permitted by its European “mission statement”. If post war Europe supported that less is more, America answers with “less is a bore”.

East Coast vs West Coast: Style vs Lifestyle

The modern style does not represent a form of life but rather a fashion.

The international style breaks the chains of modern architecture from the principles of modernity, resulting in an experiment of its formal limits. Glass, concrete and steel are used to produce different objects of desire, Americas answer to progress. The modern style does not represent a form of life but rather a fashion. A mask for change. The east coast renovates the faces of their cities and creates signature exhibition objects as products for consumption.  “A Bigger Splash” happens though once again when the international style moves westward through the frontier to find the West Coast and Los Angeles. David Hockney’s painting captures the importance of this move, as the West Coast architecture does not present modernism as a style, but as a lifestyle. Modern architecture become a vessel for the envisioned life of the user, a frame for the american household. It remains silent in the background, almost invisible with its glass and steel compositions encompassing human interaction. Pierre Koenig creates frames for luxury, Charles and Ray Eames surfaces for personal taste and Alison and Peter Smithson poches for a consumer culture paradise. Architecture finds a new relationship with interior decoration, one that reflects each user’s taste. It becomes a stage that supports a Hollywood directed American dream. An architecture of want rather than should.

We have reached the westernmost point of this imaginary map, the last frontier of the “Western” culture. There is no more “west” to go. Thus there only one question left to ask: Where is architecture’s new west?

One might debate on the validity of the rivalries presented here. Adding, removing or citing actors that deviate from the norm does not affect the overall trend. The stage has been set for ages now. The actors might change but the plot remains the same. Keep calm, everyone will have their turn. There has always been a version of the east versus one of the west. Whoever assumes the role of each does not really matter, because one way or the other the roles will be reversed at the end.  However, one thing is evident through this abbreviated history of rivalries. Architecture produced in the east needs to move west in order to grow, evolve and ultimately change. The migration from east to west is not one of betterment but alteration, addition to architecture’s repertoire and expansion of its horizons. It is a journey to the unknown, through a frontier that moved ever so slightly each time. We have reached the westernmost point of this imaginary map, the last frontier of the “Western” culture. There is no more “west” to go. Thus there only one question left to ask: Where is architecture’s new west?