Perhaps we are hampered in our search for meaning by the use of words ending with "-ism". For example, we are forever contrasting modernism with classicism.

What this actually achieves is hard to say. It seems typical that the minute a word becomes a label, the meaning is lost. The specific meanings get submerged by the generality.

Modernism is a broad all encompassing phenomenon whilst Classicism has a specific context in which the word is applied. We have to be careful about the aspects of modernism that we can compare classicism with.

In qualitative terms, we can make certain observations about how modernism is interpreted in architecture. Contemporary buildings can be roughly divided into three categories: conceptually modern, constructionally modern and post-modern. All three rely on panel assembly techniques for their construction. In their formal expression, being basically juxtapositions (geometrical or otherwise) of competing planes, the unadorned morphologies of the assemblies are also the intended aesthetic results. This was new in architecture. It was simplistic idea but somehow it provided convenient and convincing solutions for an imagined 'new' world. If it remained at that level as a merely constructional idea, we may have better understood its impact but unfortunately the modern movement pushed the view that this new mode had to supplant all previous traditions in architecture. The denial of historical realities was fundamental to the modernists' persuasive claim that its style contained an all-encompassing aesthetic suitable for creating viable future cities.

In modernism there pervades a view that Man has now arrived at the zenith of human understanding and that the abandonment of historical 'styles' is inevitable. In the scheme of western philosophy, it is plainly baseless to argue that modernism is superior to all else that came before it. It is a new way of constructing buildings but is it a sound way of making places? It need not be unsound but the results speak for themselves.

Classicism does not need comparison with Modernism to promote its aesthetic values nor does its continuing relevance need to be disputed. It exists both as a way of composing building elements theoretically and as a body of knowledge required for understanding the aesthetic intentions of past design methodologies. Classicism best compares with the conceptually modern approach in that the aspects of planar composition brings into question the problems of juxtaposing and jointing the parts into a whole. The constructional arguments are about the validity of geometrical order and the stylistic arguments are about the necessity of ornamental connectors. It is to be noted that not all traditional buildings have classical ornaments but traditional buildings compensate for the lack of motifs by the formalised use of gracefully crafted natural building materials, most notably the treatments of the roof and the eaves. In Modern design, architectural bulk is imagined in terms of juxtaposed masses of 'pure' volume. This means that the layerings are crude but the arrises are exposed and sharp. Because of the attendant philosophy of utopianism from which the forms are inspired, modern conceptions seek to provoke an image of an intrinsic world rather than the actual world of flesh and blood with a history. Ironically modern buildings, like cars, look good only when new then quickly become obsolete. This illusory aspect, when noted, suggests that we are going beyond the organic realm into an unknowing relationship with space and so paradoxically with all its good intentions modern architecture pushes us unwittingly into a predictably derelict urban destiny.

The mental constructs that go towards imagining the 'modern city' connect the entire human culture to a single abstract stylistic elaboration. Somewhere in these constructs, especially among the high minded, there is also an aim to attain new levels of artificial refinements. There is a prevalent wish for novelty in satisfying a presumed yearning for elevated 'taste'. In this sense the contemporary aims of both modernism and classicism are similar. However classicists believes that eloquence can only come from legibility while modernists are in search of experiences of the sublime. Structurally, modernists seek to interpret the architectural program as a sculptural act, by amalgamating form and space into a 'plastic' unity while classicists see unity in architecture as a multi-layered ordering of known, therefore familiar, pre-existing formal components. Classical buildings, in being imitative of past epochs, call upon skills of handicraft while modernist aims are adventurously bound to technology and mostly cannot be realised without the aid of industrial methods. Post modernism was an attempt to synthesise these two contrasting approaches. It failed but it did provide the intersection where the architectural world divided into two diverging camps: on one hand, an emboldened renewal of the modern movement through the high-tech style and deconstructivism and on the other, the rebirth of interest in vernacular architecture and classicism. Through all this, architects believe that they must pursue one approach at the exclusion of the other. The synthesis required is not at the level of building design but at the level of building theory. Theory is not about good or bad design, it precedes design. It is about what a thing is. In order to proceed with a purposeful inquiry, it is probably useful to avoid assuming that we know everything there is to know already.

Roma 12 2 2008