Zeitgeist or money?

For many centuries, the constructions were made basically with the same techniques and materials. In this sense, advances in wood construction and achievements like the complex gothic set of shapes and forces in action, as well as the very symbology of the building, can be considered extraordinary in the end of the medieval era, or Renascence. For these long centuries, the changes happened slowly, very slowly. But not free from criticism: the same that Sigfried Giedion made, but with values related to the epochs they were made by the more conservative individuals. And in spite of the fact that values might have been much more inflexible and durable before the industrial era, and thus subjected to critics, this was nothing compared to the speed of transformation and evolution that happened due to the Industrial Revolution.

Considering it was mainly a western matter, even when applied to far colonies, it is possible to say that it took a considerable time until the general perception to accept that fast changes had become the standard for urban reality. And because these changes accelerate year after year, we still feel today the enharmony of pace between generations, cultural standards and pace of technological advances: but not only this, because the whole society always changes faster than at the previous generation.

While Sigfried was probably, due to his opinion, more linked to the previous ideas about what is acceptable in terms of changes and neologisms, the trajectory of Mies Van der Rohe had already the seeds of accumulative repertory and diversity of techniques, that allowed him to see and conceive absolutely beyond the point of view of Sigfried.

But it was at the time of this transition that the need for control of excessive diversity of materials emerged. It was probably not an issue before the Industrial Revolution. Then, even though the general vocabulary for construction and art had become already almost incommensurable, it for sure have been a challenge to Mies to choose the materials and shapes. It is also evident through his own speech, when defending that the important is not the monumental size or financial function linked to the Industrial Capitalism phase. The use of three stones, concrete, chrome steel, pebbles, white painting, bronze glass and green glass, black frames and white leather, requires a lot of ability and boldness. And this is another level of richness: the cultural type.?

By using so many technological elements not only to make viable the uses of the materials, but also the non-visible technology, i.e. the cantilevered slab, crossed section pillars, free plan, big free spans for the slabs, plain roof and mainly, a geometric and synthetic language, derived from a dry and non-stilted posture, that shows the vivid tension permitted only by the new technological advances, intrinsically attached to the form and function, in a way that one thing is the other, and they are inseparable.

For these and other not yet listed or known reasons, we can say that the way Mies did his job not only sutured the "schism" between architecture and technology, proposed by Sigfried, but also closed the discussion, forever.

In this sense, nowadays, there are so many new questions that could be brought to the table, like constructions being printed by robots, prefabricated modules, scenographic and Instagrammable spaces, virtual architecture, and the apex of separation: artificial intelligence projecting spaces, and probably, executing them. We could, in a certain way, with many reasons and arguments, evoke philosophers and points of view to say that some of these new things should not be considered architecture. Specially if we keep attached to the idea that a human must exist in the process for the result to be considered a cultural product or art. But following the direction of the vector created by Giedion and pointed by the events and also by Mies, we are kind of obligated to follow the same direction: because if not, we would be probably repeating the mindset of Giedion, and we already know that even though it was so solid for him at his time, after that, it vanished, before a greater scenario.

While the Zeitgeist from Hegel (or Herder or Goethe) had been described as the process that transcends epochs and local small issues, we can for sure watch that the cosmology have been dislocated from theocentrism, to the anthropocentrism, and while nowadays we can eventually say that astrophysics and quantum physics have dislocated it to the everywhere place from the relativistic referential, we will probably face another strange change in a few years with the presence of robots and artificial intelligence entities. And surely it will affect architecture, and our relation towards art and interpretation. If the sum of new solutions and technologies increase the cultural growing towards a type of exaggerated geometric progression, the result will possibly be the singularity in culture and its products, putting even this discussion into an outdated container, like a fossil or a roman temple crumbling down, just showing the past, that will be allowed to participate at contemporary events as a guest of honor.