when do we morally accuse architecture of formalism? this question will bring us closer to an awareness of the amalgam assumptions we lump into this word "formalism".
for some people, formalism is an easy judgment on a choice of form they don't see as being rationally explicable. the judgment’s triangulating nodes are:
- the form generating methodology or its lack
- the awareness of the critic of this methodology or the lack thereof
- the common culture of forms upon which the critic relies to extract rationality or its lack (irrationality). For instance, if the choice was a default tadao ando boxlike building, the default form would not be registered by the radar of “irrationality”. Therefore, being a culturally-conspicuous form, it would, by default, be seen as a rational choice (although, in effect, it is random).
For this sort of critic, there are two divergent “alarms calls” of this irrationality:
1. when an architecture overtly refers to the outside world and therefore traps itself within the silhouette of a singular reference (for example, the billowing Burj El Arab in Dubai). The form therefore also generates a sign, a signature (to refer to Foucault), of its own being as a sign (of the exterior world). A matryoshka sign-in-a-sign. This sort of formalism will be seen as populist and crass. (now is the Sydney opera house, to a certain degree, an instance of this? Do we credit it with a better rep. only because it still manages to be formally more ambiguous? I certainly can see the kitch in it)
2. when an architecture refers to an exclusively intra-architectural world akin to a mirror world mirroring another, ie it seems to lack a direct reference to the outside world. This is where some are situating, in their very different ways, eisenman. This also exemplifies, for this critic, the greg lynn and his ilk for rendering the virtual world that created architecture into its own reference and therefore completely collapsing the signifier into the signified. For the critic, this is, in a world of physical referencing (architecture), an obvious sign of intra-referentiality. This sort of formalism will be seen as being elite and obtuse.
“Formalism”, in architecture, is therefore an accusation on both extremes of the reference and is dependent not only on the form but also on the reader’s own perception of this form and her particular engagement with an architectural subculture. It is therefore, in giving a somewhat more substantial account, never a truly substantial judgment in itself. In fact, it is, in the architecture domain, tantamount to someone inanely calling someone else “stupid” and being done with it. Well…what sort of “stupid”?
it is also quite a fitting thing that i am being accused, with moral irritation, of linguistic defamiliarization( yes, formalism was a linguistic concern prior to being an architectural one) by the same person who can't see that accusing an architecture of being overtly formal is primarily a moral attack. this is not my own morality at work here, as you, metamechanic, mockingly take on board. i have my doubts as to whether you can rephrase the lot in two sentences; i have doubts whether you even bothered to register what was written as much as to carry on riding the phallus of your favourite reads.
This is a very important issue and has been since Kant wrote about it in Critique of Judgement. Form versus content. Aesthetic formalism in architecture can lead to one thing that content driven architecture cannot: BRAND.
not unless you sell the very idea of "content", and in an anxious society without a god or a very healthy lifestyle ..."content" is a selling point. organic food sells "content", yoga classes sell "content". green architecture sells "content"
content becomes the form...or form becomes content (an agreement between aesthetic formalism and existential content-ilism)
as we've seen, 'organic' food, yoga classes, and 'green'(washed?) architecture often actually only sell the IDEA of content, which may be conveyed primarily through packaging > i.e., aesthetic formalism?
this is why i placed content between " " (you can say lingusitically packaged then). and this is why i added, at the end :"an agreement between aesthetic formalism and existential content-ilism"
you're really asking a useless question that needn't be asked (unless you weren't asking me, in which case then fair do).
actually, there would be alternative organic farms that sell their product in a deliberate lack of screaming packages, this lack of overt signification in itself adds to the signified "virginity" of their products. even in this case, packaging, in its lack, becomes a signifying cloak. (this actually brings to mind the archetype of the "pure nude virgin" (a bathing artemis, for example) in western culture, signifying purity through nudity. in other cultures, this would be an inflammatory contradiction)).
Very apt explanation of a critique of formalism. Even brand-based "content" (as SWard and vado have said above) becomes formal in the sense that it is simply a marketing tool. Content is no longer meaningful as an actual presence.
Websites and advertisers search for content with which to fill the empty selling vessels that they've created—these selling vessels are logos and brand identities.
In some ways, we've moved beyond authenticity completely. Nothing is truly authentic any longer—even once-authentic spaces have become oversaturated with their own brand. Stonehenge becomes "Stonehenge," Everest becomes "Everest," the Amazon becomes "the Amazon", et al ad nauseum. The world is brand, everything signifies, but as the marketable version of itself. This is the inescapable, inexorable logic of our global system of capital.
Buildings, rather than being meaningful spaces, are now branded signifiers of their own existence. Even buildings sell themselves.
But I think the argument was made above that "content" is now a type of aesthetic formalism—in some sense the two are conflated. Is there anything but Brand now?
for my part, and in relation to what you said, yes. i didn't disagree. i only cited an instance where "content" was also the form (or form, in this specific instance, was the "content")
but the pre-vado and post-vado bits of my contribution are very different...which is fine and yummy. one thread is never one thread, its more like split-ends hair.
the pre-vado bit had to do with the judgment made on architecture for being "formalist" ( a pejorative usage of the word, therefore moral) and how better to understand this judgment as the result of a naturally cultured reading on the part of the viewer as much as it is the result of the authoring of an architect. in that part, i didn't tackle form per se but rather 'formalism' as a judgment (accusing the architect of formal-indulgence). i'm sure i can forge some connection but am done for the day :o)
I suppose for me (having started the thread Resisting Formalism) that formalism as an accusatory moral term actually represents the absence of other values, rather than something that inheres in the work itself.
I'd be the first to acknowledge that form is a necessary, inescapable element in architecture. I use the the term formalism to critique those projects that demonstrate only formal aspects. i.e. those projects that ignore an engagement with program, social space and organization, even materiality.
The kind of self-referentiality that Noctilucent describes in point #2 at the top in some ways negates the ability of a project to be about anything but form or a commentary on the process of generating form. See Greg Lynn.
This whole issue of "content" brings to mind an article in Log 11 by Reinhold Martin called "Empty Form (Six Observations)"
The problem with most architectural formalisms is not that they are empty, but that they are not empty enough.
He argues to confront the issue of architecture's contingency to power and liability to become branding (as mentioned above by vado) by suspending our desire to fill up 'space' with stuff (like performance, affects, green-ness etc.) Empty form has a programmatic indeterminacy and creates this condition of "absolute flexibility", a "uselessness-in-reverse" where form contains all possible programs.
...any attempt to exhaust program by hypothetically "maxing-out" its parameters would leave behind a shell in which anything can happen, the emptiness of which must be understood as irreducibly formal, and irreducibly real.
Martin does not suggest that we can experience or achieve such an empty formalism, but what I take away from the article is that we need to both re-imagine how we represent space and re-tool the process (techniques) which produce architectural space with the (utopian) aim at achieving Martin's "horizon" of empty form.
perhaps its six of one and half dozen of the other. for form itself is already weighed down by the perception/opinion/experience/attitude of the viewer and is therefore given a multiplicity of (non)meaning and (un)truthfulness. which in turn places all in the (no)menclature of psychology 101 and is, therefore, quite useless.
Is he referring to something like a gigantic empty warehouse, where any program could theoretically exist? If so, I guess I don't understand how that is irreducibly formal.
Irreducibly formal because it has no attributes exceptits structure and the way it appears? i.e. It doesn't try to generate social space, or a political stance, or program?
farwest: irreducibly formal I take to mean the form is neither deterministic of meaning nor of function--I don't think it's so literal as a gigantic empty warehouse (which begins to determine uses and meanings anyway)--if only a warehouse in your head, where certainly in translation any form produces social space, is weighed down by the baggage of perception, etc. I think this sort of formalism is about creating a place where we can shrink away from the world and really sort out what architecture can do autonomously.
this is a quote from michael rotondi during my thesis defense. it's specific to the project, but also i think relates to what reinhold martin is suggesting:
"We see a lot of things that pretend that program fits the scheme, and It’s really a pretense of satisfying, or it panders to our need to have as architects life giving form to the architecture, and we’re at a stage right now where architecture gives form to some kind of life, but it certainly isn’t the kind of life that we’re saying attaches itself to…so you can move into anything and it becomes something, squatters… In something with such a grand space it doesn’t have to be a single or have a primary or secondary just like what’s happening in the streets. There could be a hundred different things going on inside of this, and it might be that the infrastructure, it’s not that it’s flexible, it’s open minded enough to allow for a lot more things at a smaller scale to happen. It’s like putting a geodesic dome over Manhattan. It’s more evening out the temperature rather than telling everybody that you are going to start living like this."
The syntax of the Rotondi quote is a little hard to parse. But it does seem to be related to Martin's comment.
But it's a bit of a conceit used by "formal" architects (for lack of a better term) that their architecture allows for the generation of different kinds of programs—that they're somehow creating an open field for programmatic variety, just because they make a wall, or a roof.
Just because you make a big open space, even one with a shape, doesn't mean that an opera, a dog show, and a brothel will evolve there. More often than not, those places fall into ruin. What starts out empty often remains empty, barring other specific social generators.
One of architecture's main tasks is to give relevance to places. We don't only accomplish that through form—occasionally, we have to decree that certain places will serve specific functions. In that sense, I think Reinhold Martin's comment is sort of bullshit. He's selling architecture, and architects, short in the name of some sort of abstract argument about emptiness and form. It's an argument about reality that fails to provide any realistic examples. Provide examples, and I might believe.
It occurs to me that the problem with architectural research, and with theories such as Rienhold Martin's, is that they adopt a quasi-scientific tone without any of the science.
What has been studied extensively in architecture are tectonics and materials science. But what has not been studied with any rigor are the ways in which human beings operate in space—or in specific spaces. Architecture is itself the experiment. But architects don't often seem to draw lessons from their experiments....because they label these experiments "design."
Architecture is ultimately an act of enframing life. It is an act of making structures that are inhabited by living things.
So it's odd to me that so much of the discussion within our profession (the vast majority, in fact) is about inert material, as if this material could somehow exist meaningfully separate from its human users.
it doesn't have to START as empty form. how 'bout a non-scientific description of why architecture might GET emptied and repurposed?:
Every beautiful piece of architecture has survived its original appearance, purpose, and function, and many have served many functions successively. The right of an architectural work to last – and finally, its right to be – lies only in its beauty and not in its function. For it assumes a new function – beauty. Beauty is the most resistant structure and the most resistant material. – Gio Ponti
was your thesis project a stoa? because the description of what it could be sounds like a stoa. for all you kids out there a stoa is this thing from greek times.
farwest1:"It occurs to me that the problem with architectural research, and with theories such as Rienhold Martin's, is that they adopt a quasi-scientific tone without any of the science"
if you are referring to the kind of architectural “research” which i have in mind, then i agree ... except that i would replace quasi- with pseudo-. i would like to read "intellectual impostures" by socal & bricmont for a fun ride through instances of that. not just yet.
its not so much that i would be against the language of science being used to encourage analogical thinking...that is to say, an imagination that mimics the beep, hiss and buzz of scientific methodology as it operates on fundamentally indeterminable and necessarily ambiguous things. but that it is used to determine a non-analogical certitude, there is something to be said for it being quite a selfish, even religious, quarantine of truth. the limitation would be in not recognizing the value of figuration itself through confounding the rhetoric of figuration (infinite, chameleon-like, dissociating) with the rhetoric of pragmatics (finite, determined, immediate) and the rhetoric of science (omnipresent, determinable, sequential). the result is, as i see it, the stubborn anthropomorphic didacticism of a surgeon operating on a cloud (or, to give this a more mythical ring, Operating on Proteus).
Yes, Noctilucent. Ultimately architecture is a "social" science, rather than a hard science. As such, it possesses all of the ambiguity and impossibility of, say, sociology or anthropology or history. We cannot make definitive statements about how architecture operates, because it is different in every condition, and for every user.
Like History, architecture is its own experiment. Each building is a kind of research project whose results are deferred until the end of the life of the building.
when the shapes or forms come from mathematical and geometrical aproachs, we talk about "formalism"
but when they are coming from constructives justifications, certainly we won't use the word "formalism"
Oct 11, 08 2:38 pm ·
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formalism and formalism
when do we morally accuse architecture of formalism? this question will bring us closer to an awareness of the amalgam assumptions we lump into this word "formalism".
for some people, formalism is an easy judgment on a choice of form they don't see as being rationally explicable. the judgment’s triangulating nodes are:
- the form generating methodology or its lack
- the awareness of the critic of this methodology or the lack thereof
- the common culture of forms upon which the critic relies to extract rationality or its lack (irrationality). For instance, if the choice was a default tadao ando boxlike building, the default form would not be registered by the radar of “irrationality”. Therefore, being a culturally-conspicuous form, it would, by default, be seen as a rational choice (although, in effect, it is random).
For this sort of critic, there are two divergent “alarms calls” of this irrationality:
1. when an architecture overtly refers to the outside world and therefore traps itself within the silhouette of a singular reference (for example, the billowing Burj El Arab in Dubai). The form therefore also generates a sign, a signature (to refer to Foucault), of its own being as a sign (of the exterior world). A matryoshka sign-in-a-sign. This sort of formalism will be seen as populist and crass. (now is the Sydney opera house, to a certain degree, an instance of this? Do we credit it with a better rep. only because it still manages to be formally more ambiguous? I certainly can see the kitch in it)
2. when an architecture refers to an exclusively intra-architectural world akin to a mirror world mirroring another, ie it seems to lack a direct reference to the outside world. This is where some are situating, in their very different ways, eisenman. This also exemplifies, for this critic, the greg lynn and his ilk for rendering the virtual world that created architecture into its own reference and therefore completely collapsing the signifier into the signified. For the critic, this is, in a world of physical referencing (architecture), an obvious sign of intra-referentiality. This sort of formalism will be seen as being elite and obtuse.
“Formalism”, in architecture, is therefore an accusation on both extremes of the reference and is dependent not only on the form but also on the reader’s own perception of this form and her particular engagement with an architectural subculture. It is therefore, in giving a somewhat more substantial account, never a truly substantial judgment in itself. In fact, it is, in the architecture domain, tantamount to someone inanely calling someone else “stupid” and being done with it. Well…what sort of “stupid”?
correction: "Therefore, being a culturally [bold]non[/bold]-conspicuous form
khhh...why isn't the bold working?
because html tags are not 'formally' correct... too long..
change the rather irrational form [ bold ] for the more conspicuous silhouette of a single alphabetical sign [ b ]
non
*yawn*
I am sleepy
it is also quite a fitting thing that i am being accused, with moral irritation, of linguistic defamiliarization( yes, formalism was a linguistic concern prior to being an architectural one) by the same person who can't see that accusing an architecture of being overtly formal is primarily a moral attack. this is not my own morality at work here, as you, metamechanic, mockingly take on board. i have my doubts as to whether you can rephrase the lot in two sentences; i have doubts whether you even bothered to register what was written as much as to carry on riding the phallus of your favourite reads.
This is a very important issue and has been since Kant wrote about it in Critique of Judgement. Form versus content. Aesthetic formalism in architecture can lead to one thing that content driven architecture cannot: BRAND.
not unless you sell the very idea of "content", and in an anxious society without a god or a very healthy lifestyle ..."content" is a selling point. organic food sells "content", yoga classes sell "content". green architecture sells "content"
content becomes the form...or form becomes content (an agreement between aesthetic formalism and existential content-ilism)
as we've seen, 'organic' food, yoga classes, and 'green'(washed?) architecture often actually only sell the IDEA of content, which may be conveyed primarily through packaging > i.e., aesthetic formalism?
steven;
this is why i placed content between " " (you can say lingusitically packaged then). and this is why i added, at the end :"an agreement between aesthetic formalism and existential content-ilism"
you're really asking a useless question that needn't be asked (unless you weren't asking me, in which case then fair do).
actually, there would be alternative organic farms that sell their product in a deliberate lack of screaming packages, this lack of overt signification in itself adds to the signified "virginity" of their products. even in this case, packaging, in its lack, becomes a signifying cloak. (this actually brings to mind the archetype of the "pure nude virgin" (a bathing artemis, for example) in western culture, signifying purity through nudity. in other cultures, this would be an inflammatory contradiction)).
Noctilucent,
Very apt explanation of a critique of formalism. Even brand-based "content" (as SWard and vado have said above) becomes formal in the sense that it is simply a marketing tool. Content is no longer meaningful as an actual presence.
Websites and advertisers search for content with which to fill the empty selling vessels that they've created—these selling vessels are logos and brand identities.
In some ways, we've moved beyond authenticity completely. Nothing is truly authentic any longer—even once-authentic spaces have become oversaturated with their own brand. Stonehenge becomes "Stonehenge," Everest becomes "Everest," the Amazon becomes "the Amazon", et al ad nauseum. The world is brand, everything signifies, but as the marketable version of itself. This is the inescapable, inexorable logic of our global system of capital.
Buildings, rather than being meaningful spaces, are now branded signifiers of their own existence. Even buildings sell themselves.
well are you talking about aesthetic formalism or not? because if you are talking about content than you are not talking about aesthetic formalism.
But I think the argument was made above that "content" is now a type of aesthetic formalism—in some sense the two are conflated. Is there anything but Brand now?
a sign isn't formalism. it is symbolism.
even though it may be a form.
vado,
for my part, and in relation to what you said, yes. i didn't disagree. i only cited an instance where "content" was also the form (or form, in this specific instance, was the "content")
but the pre-vado and post-vado bits of my contribution are very different...which is fine and yummy. one thread is never one thread, its more like split-ends hair.
the pre-vado bit had to do with the judgment made on architecture for being "formalist" ( a pejorative usage of the word, therefore moral) and how better to understand this judgment as the result of a naturally cultured reading on the part of the viewer as much as it is the result of the authoring of an architect. in that part, i didn't tackle form per se but rather 'formalism' as a judgment (accusing the architect of formal-indulgence). i'm sure i can forge some connection but am done for the day :o)
I suppose for me (having started the thread Resisting Formalism) that formalism as an accusatory moral term actually represents the absence of other values, rather than something that inheres in the work itself.
I'd be the first to acknowledge that form is a necessary, inescapable element in architecture. I use the the term formalism to critique those projects that demonstrate only formal aspects. i.e. those projects that ignore an engagement with program, social space and organization, even materiality.
The kind of self-referentiality that Noctilucent describes in point #2 at the top in some ways negates the ability of a project to be about anything but form or a commentary on the process of generating form. See Greg Lynn.
This whole issue of "content" brings to mind an article in Log 11 by Reinhold Martin called "Empty Form (Six Observations)"
The problem with most architectural formalisms is not that they are empty, but that they are not empty enough.
He argues to confront the issue of architecture's contingency to power and liability to become branding (as mentioned above by vado) by suspending our desire to fill up 'space' with stuff (like performance, affects, green-ness etc.) Empty form has a programmatic indeterminacy and creates this condition of "absolute flexibility", a "uselessness-in-reverse" where form contains all possible programs.
...any attempt to exhaust program by hypothetically "maxing-out" its parameters would leave behind a shell in which anything can happen, the emptiness of which must be understood as irreducibly formal, and irreducibly real.
Martin does not suggest that we can experience or achieve such an empty formalism, but what I take away from the article is that we need to both re-imagine how we represent space and re-tool the process (techniques) which produce architectural space with the (utopian) aim at achieving Martin's "horizon" of empty form.
perhaps its six of one and half dozen of the other. for form itself is already weighed down by the perception/opinion/experience/attitude of the viewer and is therefore given a multiplicity of (non)meaning and (un)truthfulness. which in turn places all in the (no)menclature of psychology 101 and is, therefore, quite useless.
Is he referring to something like a gigantic empty warehouse, where any program could theoretically exist? If so, I guess I don't understand how that is irreducibly formal.
Irreducibly formal because it has no attributes exceptits structure and the way it appears? i.e. It doesn't try to generate social space, or a political stance, or program?
farwest: irreducibly formal I take to mean the form is neither deterministic of meaning nor of function--I don't think it's so literal as a gigantic empty warehouse (which begins to determine uses and meanings anyway)--if only a warehouse in your head, where certainly in translation any form produces social space, is weighed down by the baggage of perception, etc. I think this sort of formalism is about creating a place where we can shrink away from the world and really sort out what architecture can do autonomously.
this discussion needs alcohol...
to nick and farwest:
this is a quote from michael rotondi during my thesis defense. it's specific to the project, but also i think relates to what reinhold martin is suggesting:
"We see a lot of things that pretend that program fits the scheme, and It’s really a pretense of satisfying, or it panders to our need to have as architects life giving form to the architecture, and we’re at a stage right now where architecture gives form to some kind of life, but it certainly isn’t the kind of life that we’re saying attaches itself to…so you can move into anything and it becomes something, squatters… In something with such a grand space it doesn’t have to be a single or have a primary or secondary just like what’s happening in the streets. There could be a hundred different things going on inside of this, and it might be that the infrastructure, it’s not that it’s flexible, it’s open minded enough to allow for a lot more things at a smaller scale to happen. It’s like putting a geodesic dome over Manhattan. It’s more evening out the temperature rather than telling everybody that you are going to start living like this."
The syntax of the Rotondi quote is a little hard to parse. But it does seem to be related to Martin's comment.
But it's a bit of a conceit used by "formal" architects (for lack of a better term) that their architecture allows for the generation of different kinds of programs—that they're somehow creating an open field for programmatic variety, just because they make a wall, or a roof.
Just because you make a big open space, even one with a shape, doesn't mean that an opera, a dog show, and a brothel will evolve there. More often than not, those places fall into ruin. What starts out empty often remains empty, barring other specific social generators.
One of architecture's main tasks is to give relevance to places. We don't only accomplish that through form—occasionally, we have to decree that certain places will serve specific functions. In that sense, I think Reinhold Martin's comment is sort of bullshit. He's selling architecture, and architects, short in the name of some sort of abstract argument about emptiness and form. It's an argument about reality that fails to provide any realistic examples. Provide examples, and I might believe.
It occurs to me that the problem with architectural research, and with theories such as Rienhold Martin's, is that they adopt a quasi-scientific tone without any of the science.
What has been studied extensively in architecture are tectonics and materials science. But what has not been studied with any rigor are the ways in which human beings operate in space—or in specific spaces. Architecture is itself the experiment. But architects don't often seem to draw lessons from their experiments....because they label these experiments "design."
Architecture is ultimately an act of enframing life. It is an act of making structures that are inhabited by living things.
So it's odd to me that so much of the discussion within our profession (the vast majority, in fact) is about inert material, as if this material could somehow exist meaningfully separate from its human users.
it doesn't have to START as empty form. how 'bout a non-scientific description of why architecture might GET emptied and repurposed?:
Every beautiful piece of architecture has survived its original appearance, purpose, and function, and many have served many functions successively. The right of an architectural work to last – and finally, its right to be – lies only in its beauty and not in its function. For it assumes a new function – beauty. Beauty is the most resistant structure and the most resistant material. – Gio Ponti
was your thesis project a stoa? because the description of what it could be sounds like a stoa. for all you kids out there a stoa is this thing from greek times.
farwest1:"It occurs to me that the problem with architectural research, and with theories such as Rienhold Martin's, is that they adopt a quasi-scientific tone without any of the science"
if you are referring to the kind of architectural “research” which i have in mind, then i agree ... except that i would replace quasi- with pseudo-. i would like to read "intellectual impostures" by socal & bricmont for a fun ride through instances of that. not just yet.
its not so much that i would be against the language of science being used to encourage analogical thinking...that is to say, an imagination that mimics the beep, hiss and buzz of scientific methodology as it operates on fundamentally indeterminable and necessarily ambiguous things. but that it is used to determine a non-analogical certitude, there is something to be said for it being quite a selfish, even religious, quarantine of truth. the limitation would be in not recognizing the value of figuration itself through confounding the rhetoric of figuration (infinite, chameleon-like, dissociating) with the rhetoric of pragmatics (finite, determined, immediate) and the rhetoric of science (omnipresent, determinable, sequential). the result is, as i see it, the stubborn anthropomorphic didacticism of a surgeon operating on a cloud (or, to give this a more mythical ring, Operating on Proteus).
Yes, Noctilucent. Ultimately architecture is a "social" science, rather than a hard science. As such, it possesses all of the ambiguity and impossibility of, say, sociology or anthropology or history. We cannot make definitive statements about how architecture operates, because it is different in every condition, and for every user.
Like History, architecture is its own experiment. Each building is a kind of research project whose results are deferred until the end of the life of the building.
We can and should make definitive statement about how architecture operates.
when the shapes or forms come from mathematical and geometrical aproachs, we talk about "formalism"
but when they are coming from constructives justifications, certainly we won't use the word "formalism"
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