What is the architectural identity of a city?
If we stick to what the term identity originally means (i.e. ‘that which does not change, and remains the same by repeating itself over and over again’) it actually seems difficult to know.
Drawing a parallel with human beings, one could say that only a few immutable features like our blood type could be said to constitute our identity. Referred to the question above, our blood type would probably equate to something like a city’s distinct site, at best.
Site (another term exhausted by overuse) originally means ‘that which is left, set down, allowed to be,’ so we can immediately recognize a strong relation between site and identity, as defined above.
Bogotá - a city I feel I know rather well - is reclined against the stone wall of the so-called ‘Eastern Hills,’ high above the Andes. That specific, unchangeable position also includes the bright-blue sky that is typical of the dry seasons, making it a case in point for our definition of a city’s architectural identity. To be sure, any architecture built there cannot avoid the backdrop of those mountains, the particularly bright light of that sky, the remarkably thin air at that height. Thus, we can confidently claim that those qualities constitute the city’s architectural identity.
As you’ll notice, we’re attributing architectural identity to something outside the architecture itself; something that affects it, probably even determines it, but is actually not intrinsic to it. Shouldn’t the architectural identity of a city be a quality of the buildings themselves?
Probably not. Paradoxically, when buildings are deliberately kept from changing, their use tends to alter radically. Original fortresses, temples, or city centers, for example, are preserved because they change; because they are turned into museums or monuments of one kind or another - a radical shift from the functional environments they once were.
So, should we still talk about identity when (at best) only a few aspects of a building or city really stand still, while others radically change? Is the architectural identity of Venice, for instance, related to the configuration and proportion of its small squares and canals; or (a feature that truly repeats itself over and over again) is Venice’s identity rather linked to over-tourism?
Come to think of it, it is no-doubt challenging to think of any single aspect of an artifact as sufficiently static to speak of it as an ‘identity.’ Sure, we can always recognize salient features that allow us to describe and differentiate that artifact from others. More than identity, though, I’d rather speak of a city’s architectural character.
Originally meaning ‘that which is marked or engraved,’ the word character grasps important features of something while still recognizing its ability to change. Probably we cannot change our blood type (identity), but our characteristic shyness or indiscipline, for instance, can be taken for salient features of who we are, and still change - like an engraving that smoothens out or darkens with time.
Staying with Venice, and mindless of mainland Mestre, we can take the city’s hundred-and-twenty-six islands on the lagoon in the Adriatic as ‘that which does not change:’ Identity.
Beyond that fact, it becomes clear that the scale and style of the beloved churches and palaces, determined to a large degree by the technical solution employed in their foundation, has radically changed over time and certainly does not exist anymore. One would be misled to believe that repeating an obsolete procedure would preserve a building’s identity - freezing one aspect of reality simply means forcing another aspect to change, as we said.
Evidently, determining which features from an object are salient-enough to become characteristic depends on individual experience. The same city can present itself quite differently to different people, who will therefore perceive architectural character in different ways. Istanbul, for example, is surely not the same for a couple of pensioners than for a young student, and not the same for a family coming from the provinces than for a team of corporate executives. Some will use the city mostly by day, others by night; some will eat in certain places, require certain goods and services, even walk at certain speed; different from the speed and rhythm in which the others move and therefore live the city.
I bring this up because, in one way or another, these thoughts come forth in most architects’ minds, especially at the start of any design process. Usually the question of identity comes forth as something like: ‘I’m trying to figure out this city’s, or this neighborhood’s architectural identity, in order to make my design become part of that identity.’
Hopefully the distinction made above is sufficiently discouraging in that direction - it would actually be sad if a city did indeed have said identity, as it would basically reflect a lack of complexity or vitality. Would we even want to design for an environment that cannot change? Besides, how could something new - that new design we’re aiming for - become part of something else without altering it?
Fortunately buildings and cities are always changing. Thus, rather than aiming to inscribe one’s work into a fossil, it seems much more realistic to keep our perception and analyses of the cities we work in at once open and modest. Open in the sense that our perception and analysis cannot aim to be conclusive, and modest in the sense that we never lose sight of the fact that many important features of reality will always escape us.
Marseille, for instance, appeared especially rough to me, mostly because of who I am and what I saw therefore. The little time I spent there, I spent admiring the august buildings by Fernand Pouillon, almost pumice-like in their facades. By chance I also came across a rather seedy café, full of hardened customers and brilliant music; but for the most part I walked for days along the rough alleys and stairs and buildings at the margins of the city’s Old Port.
This intimate experience leads me to feel that if I had to design a building for Marseille, I would probably depart from the roughness which I found characteristic of that city. It goes without saying that someone else with a completely different experience could develop a better design than mine, departing from Marseille’s elegance or softness - two perfectly feasible readings, just not mine.
Beyond this apparent relativity, what is usually absent from most conversations about a city’s architectural character is the architect’s own, active role in the constitution of that character. This is because, rather than a ‘thing,’ something’s character is actually a relation between two things, namely: what is observed and its observer.
Back to the start, it is no-doubt convenient to claim that cities have a determined architectural identity - probably that’s why the term is so widespread. It makes things so much easier! Mindless of who gets to determine it (or why?), adherence to a claimed identity spares us from difficult choices, such as evaluating inconsistent aspects of reality, choosing which of those aspects are more relevant than others for our work, foreseeing change, and so on. Since evaluation and choice entail a host of risks and responsibilities, it appears safer to claim that there’s an incontrovertible ‘given,’ and that our work is ‘correct’ in relation to that given.
But like the principles that sustain systems of common law, where specific cases determine the direction in which a necessarily changing system moves, cities are also made piecemeal and change all the time. Seen this way, the safety and the certainty promised by identity become vane illusions, at best.
A new technology will inevitably bring forth new conflicts that will have to be integrated in our codes of social conduct; just as much as into our buildings and the cities that result form their aggregation. Our choices regarding how to initiate and characterize our work for a particular place must therefore be recognized as mere guesses - hopefully our very best guesses - regarding what matters to us somewhere, what is worth reacting to (and how?).
But without a fixed identity, and with a quite open idea of character, what is it then that we react to, when we design something new for any city?
Since nothing comes out of nowhere, any vision of a new architecture for a particular city can only come from the things we already know. Following Huxley, we can define this knowledge as our systematized experience. In other words, there is no doubt that all of us perceive lots of things all the time; but it is also clear that only some of those things actually manage to make sense in relation to each other, and therefore fit within the category of what each of us knows.
The way we relate to that systematized knowledge - the way we choose to curate our own archive of experiences - can also be thought of as defining a particular character. Granted that we choose independently, the choices we make as architects can be described, explained, examined, evaluated, and therefore made distinct from others’ choices, made on the basis of different systematized experiences.
Such architectural character - no longer a city’s, but an architect’s - comes forth in the work of artists, when it attains that quality we refer to as consistency. For instance, across several movies, one can clearly see the different ‘worlds’ that are conveyed to us by the film artists Wes Anderson and Tim Burton. For whatever reason, while the first brings forth a bright, colorful world, made largely of surfaces, the second takes us into a world of fields and shadows and depths.
Inadvertently in many cases, each of us perceives the world in a way that can only be taken for characteristic. For some of us it can come close to the world brought forth by Paul Rudolph in some of his buildings, so rough and yet so delicate; for some of us it can look like it was built by Craig Ellwood - lightweight and accurate. Heinrich Tessenow’s drawings speak of a world unlike the one Lina Bo Bardi’s drawings come from. And if we allow ourselves the opportunity to observe our own work attentively; if we learn to examine and evaluate what we do; we can actually make sense of our own aesthetic character, like I just described a few different worlds above - a crucial step to realize what kind of architecture we’re capable of.
How would I react to the roughness I perceived in Marseille? Probably by contrast, given my devotion for the very simple architectures I’ve seen in Japanese magazines, my love for reflections, my admiration of steel, how puzzled I always am by the beauty of glass - things that populate my ‘world.’ But that’s just me at this moment, it must certainly be different for everyone else, or even for myself, later on.
What should not happen - the actual reason why I put myself to try and make sense of these two words: identity and character - is that we miss out on the opportunity to really examine and evaluate the cities we design and build for; but most importantly, that we miss out on the opportunity to really examine and evaluate our own (meaningful) practice of architecture, by doing one of three things:
a) presuming that our goal as architects can only be to fit our work (correctly, respectfully, etc.) within a city’s alleged identity. As we’ve seen, identity-claims are usually a dereliction of duty, which unavoidably leads us to neglect the richness of those contexts where our work should entangle itself and try to make sense;
b) believing that any city can actually have a single character. While it is certainly useful as an advertisement strategy, the arrogance required to claim that anyone can actually figure out a single, solitary, and definitive feature that conclusively explains an inevitably complex situation, can only play against our work’s sophistication, richness, or nuance; and
c) neglecting our own character, as both origin and goal of our work as architects. As Amancio Guedes noted, every architect builds a very specific world throughout a lifetime of practice. Everything we build cannot avoid coming from, but also becoming part of that world. Therefore, each and every building made by an architect - it doesn’t matter where it’s actually built - adds up with all others buildings made by that architect into a city, that we can safely presume exists in the singular mind where a specific set of experiences make sense together as knowledge.
Does that intimate, radically personal city have a site? And if so, should we think of that site in relation to an identity?
Venice. Source: https://venicewiki.org/it/cose-veneziane/fondazioni-edifici-veneziani/