Welcome to the Machine

As I was pointing out in this article from May 2021, from its inception, the so-called 'International Style' was hardly welcomed or cherished by the non-initiated public. After a century of existence, although the style seems to have fully exhausted its possibilities, it continues to linger due to a certain technological inertia.

I am a huge fan of the theorist and ethnographer Radu Dragan. His book, 'Les Mondes renverses. Etude sur la representation de l’espace de la societe traditionnelle' constitutes an exemplary analysis of the understanding of 'space' in certain rural communities in county Valcea, Romania, although by no means restricted to that particular region. The study is conducted in the ethnographic tradition of Mircea Eliade, Levi Strauss and Georges Dumézil, although I might suggest its rigor vastly surpasses that of the mid-century scholars. 'Les Mondes renverses' discovers a perennial folk metaphysics that used to permeate people's understanding of space and time, inside and outside, this world and the one beyond.

But Radu Dragan is also involved in architectural design and is the director of a highly successful architecture studio in Paris. His projects span across a wide range of programmes - from residential to culture, education, hotel, commercial, transport, high rise and urban planning. While browsing through the impressive online portfolio of 'Dragan Architecture' - one is struck by the realisation that nothing from his ethnographic ruminations transpires in the designs. The architecture can only be described as 'International' or 'Modernist', not in the 20th century rigid formalism, of course, but with the automatic Android updates of Critical Regionalism, the rediscovery of 'the street', 'the local context', the 'post-post-modern post-ironic allusion' and, most importantly, BIM software. The designs could belong to any other large studio based in France, Germany or the UK.

If a mind as energetic and fertile as that of Monsieur Radu is tied to the same formal recipes as 99% of the industry today, we must be looking at a glass ceiling of powerlessness among contemporary architects. And there is no doubt where this powerlessness comes from. BIM tools, with their formal standardisation of the already standardised technological means of construction; real estate developers and investors who lack vision and focus purely on optimisation of resources. Add to that the post-2010s sustainability regulations, the post-Grenfell (or similar) fire safety regulations, or the post-2021 socially distanced design directions; layer after layer of technological, legal and formal constraint, leading to an authorless, bland and post-human non-style which can only be described by Rem Koolhaas's apt metaphor of 'junkspace'.

I do not wish to suggest that constraints are bad for our profession. On the contrary, any architectural designer can testify that through the very limitations of a site - its particularities, its local materials, its spatial and legal limits - our creativity is sparked in a way that never would in a placeless expanse. This is probably why no one is proud of their bold utopian desert designs produced at the request of Saudi princes. We can make fun of such designs to our hearts content, without fear of attracting the unwanted attention of the Eye of Sauron.

What, then, differs with these new types of constrains given by industrial building technologies, BIM, inclusivity, environmentalism and social non-proximity? Their complete indifference to the human scale of activity. Like Midjourney AI, they were authored by algorithm and were destined to be appreciated by algorithm. Or NPCs, if you will.

Uncle Ted wrote about 'the power process' as a measure of humaneness:

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"The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal.?

History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.?

Non-attainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if non-attainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals."

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In other words, adversities are part of the ingredients that give life meaning, posing real challenges that keep us grounded and make life worthwhile. Struggling to find shelter, food, protection for our families offers real and authentic rewards to our existence, if we can find a balance between too much adversity and too much luxury. This precarious balance is what uncle Ted calls 'the power process'.

Almost nothing in the architecture profession today has anything to do with the process described above. The buildings design themselves, under the constrains of briefs and the many layers of CAD and BIM prefabricated assets. There is almost nothing that requires the architect to act like an artisan, to have direct input on his designs and obtain tangible results. A set of PDFs and jpegs are the only tangible result (s)he will see, while the project is being moved through the phases of detailed drawings and site realisation. Rarely does the architect even encounter the finalised product in real life.

The inhabitants of the buildings are equally deprived of any chance of a 'power process' in their relation to the structure. They will rarely 'dwell in the land', establish roots, become part of a stable community to which the home, commercial space, cultural centre - provides shelter and a warm backdrop. Most of the times the building is seen as a mere asset and yet another step on the property ladder. The coldness of the design and its unapproachable features prevent the inhabitants from forming any attachment to it.

Of course, uncle Ted's scribbles may strike us as reductionist. He criticises the unfortunate outcomes of the industrial revolution, still his analysis of human needs is more evocative of machines than cultural, religious beings. There is more to 'authenticity' then the strictly material 'power process', although it can be applied as a heuristic rule to judge whether some activity is genuine or a mere surrogate.?The cause of the troubled radical's inability to define the essence of authentic living and culture-making was, ironically, the same cause that makes contemporary architectural designs look the way they do - an entirely modern education that tends to treat humans like machines.

'Welcome my son

Welcome to the machine

What did you dream?

It's alright we told you what to dream'

In a future article I might propose two ways out of this formal dead end.