The Building

 
- Imitation

"The meaning of Aristotle is clear. What he wishes to show is that the artist imitates things as they ought to be (and therefore not necessarily as they are). What is more, he imitates no physical objects as such but 'things' in so far as they are the vehicles of an essential significance to him. It is in this sense that we can say that the Aristotlian concept of mimesis shows the way in which the world is true for us."

Dimitri Porphyrios²

What passes as architectural criticism these days is a series of elaborations on impressions. Substantive issues such as social dispersion and energy waste hardly raises a whisper in the self annoint circles of the design elitè. Objectivity only exists at the level of political exigencies operating inside cultural bureaucracies. And since we no longer need to agree on formalist nor moral values, what is "true" has become a matter of choice, but nonetheless creative tendencies can still be observed and what motivates designers can still be questioned.

The juxtaposition of glass and metal is very prevalent in modern construction lending a monolithic sameness to modern urban landscapes. What interests me about this is how modern design solutions are actually quite predictable. Despite the self-avowal of creative originality, modern design operates inside a very narrow range of a codified methodology using a very limited set of expressive possibilities. Every design has the feeling of being a cloned cousin of some other. It is ironical that modern design promotes itself in the name of innovation because in practice, it is totally imitative, no longer in the sense of the quoted mimesis, but mimicking of each others designs, striving for "one-upmanship" and singularly self-absorbed despite the bountiful availability of possible idiomatic associations and substantial debts to each other's works at the conceptual level.

The biggest conceptual problem of modernism arises, not so much because modern buildings are not likeable individually, but from its inability to weave a convincing urban fabric. On the city street some system of codification is obligatory. Imagine a street that contains a series of iconic statements such as those mentioned in the previous page. Would it have any coherence? The short answer is evidently no as many urban theorists such as Leon Krier have already pointed out, the permanent city is not a park for architectural expositions. The issue remains suspended until someone can provide an exemplary solution that deserves a sincere affective response from the public. The clues are surely there in the traditional street architecture of anytime from the nineteenth century and back. There the buildings "imitate" each other in a formal sense without resorting to actual copying. Individuality is stamped over a pattern of familiarity. Why throw away this valuable heritage of subliminal cooperation? Powerful action is always underscored by common belief. If we can't reverse the tide of the loss of faith, may we at least reaffirm the belief in the everlasting value of Civiltà.

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2. Classical Architecture, Dimitri Porphyrios

 
Siracusa, 27 7 2004