Modernism / Postmodernism

I like gross simplifications. Some of the psychologists I've listened to say reality is too complex for us to process as a whole. We therefore break it down into packets. Each packet could contain billions of sub packets - we manage our processing budget by not seeing those. Some religions say something similar. That once you think you've understood the complexity of anything, a deeper complexity will reveal itself. That you will never know the mind of God.

I like to try to understand why some things are the way they are. And sometimes I avoid this responsibility by telling myself that it's too complicated and others know way more than me. And then I remember that it feels so good and reassuring when I define where I am in relation to the things I want to understand. And that even the person with the highest IQ in the world only partly knows what's going on.

I've always had a natural affinity with Modernism. Even as a child I felt more comfortable in my Alvar Aaltoesque infant school of the 70's than my one hundred year old back to back terrace house with its outside toilet. Yes - who would have thought there would be a single story, angled, curved, white rendered walled building with classrooms that had glass doors to their own outside garden spaces in Salford? A Modernist's dream. Aged five, I always worried about the old house falling down. The end house on pretty much every street had collapsed - patterned wallpaper and stair scars becoming external elevations. I actually saw the bookies at the end of our street fall in on itself, exciting stuff. I hated Coronation Street and loved the Six Million Dollar Man.

Here comes the simplification of infinity alluded to earlier. Modernism in wider society pursued universal truths or laws of nature through science and technology, not allowing tradition to limit investigation. Einstein shook the foundations of stability showing that even the edifice of fixed time and space is an illusion. Piccasso broke out of the historic confines of the two dimensional picture plane, inside painting itself, with Cubism. Architecture hunted for a fundamental expression, freed from the bounds of externally applied language. 

Post Modernist writing is very difficult to understand. Until you realise that it is trying to speak without making a statement of truth or putting forward a fixed position. It's a paradox - how is it possible to say 'there is no truth' - if saying 'there is no truth' by your own philosophy, can't be true? They have to do verbal gymnastics in order to say without saying - I used to mistake it for Zen, but that's something else altogether! 

In architecture Le Corbusier developed the Modular. A system of proportion based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers. He was trying to uncover universally beautiful rules of form. Modernism and technology allowed him to jeterson the language of ornament, hierarchy historically added to buildings. And work with abstract geometry in a much more experimental and creative way. Mies Van Der Rohe stripped architecture down to its most fundamental form - the plane. The wall, the floor and the roof. He also had columns and glass - but I think he would have eliminated those if the technology would have allowed it. 

Postmodernism in architecture, as with Postmodern philosophy, mocks the searious, earnest search for truth of the Modernists. Robert Venturi brilliantly transformed Mies' 'Less is more' into 'Less is a bore'. He later regretted saying it - but I think all is fair in love and war. Po Mo brought back all of the languages of architecture - it even turned Modernism into a style - just another set of symbols to be added to all the others and used to say.........something.

Intellectually I am superficially attracted to this way of thinking. Imagine being completely free of any fundamentally correct way of doing anything. Free to say anything and it be of equal value to anything else said - because I say so. The reason I rejected it is because all the master works I've experienced tap into something fundamental, they share a truth. A truth that, although connected, exists apart from syntax or language.

Hence why I'm still a Modernist. Even though I use elements of historic architectural languages, albeit as abstracted artifacts. I still believe there are fundamental truths to be uncovered through creativity and the only way to uncover them is to free yourself from convention or traditional ways of operating. 

Addendum

Yesterday after publishing this blog Professor Richard Brook, Director of Research at Lancaster School of Architecture, recognised my infant school from the description and sent me photos of the building. It was designed by Cruickshank and Seward. Continuing the synchronicity - yesterday I was teaching at the Manchester School of Architecture. This morning I found out their building is also by Cruickshank and Seward. I've always admired its radical form and free flowing plan, but have never thought to find out where it came from. And even further synchronicity, I bumped into Richard at the Peter Cook lecture last night after not seeing him for years. What does all this mean?