Classicism and Modernism

 
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 probably at base a simplistic idea but somehow it manifested with an overwhelming sense of temporal relevance.

In modernism there pervades a view that Man has now arrived at the zenith of advancement and that the abandonment of historical 'styles' is inevitable. In the scheme of metaphysics, 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 and the roads are full of cars. Is this a sound way of making the human habitat? It need not be unsound but in retrospect the results, both artistically and socially, 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 architectonic 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 traditionally vernacular 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. It seems to be changing but there has been a view in some quarters that Classicism and traditional architectonics in the modern context merely satisfies our cravings for nostalgia. This view is misguided. From Vitruvius to today there is an intellectual history of a discipline in the study of formal relationships, geometry and proportion on one hand and the carrying forward of handicraft traditions on the other.

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 all pervading influence of utopianism from which the forms are inspired, modern conceptions seek to provoke an image of an imagined world rather than the actual world of flesh and blood with a history. If it can be argued that modernist forms aspire to a Platonic view of perfection then ironically it proves Platonism as a fallacy when taken out of the mental realm because like cars and other industrial products that aspire to an integral perfection, they suffer the problem of obsolescense. So there is a contradiction between intent and consequence. Their conceptions have an illusory aspect that hovers in the tension between technological confidence and reality. The prevalence of modernism therefore 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 problematic urban destiny of maintaining a culture of perpetual newness.

The mental constructs that go towards imagining the 'modern city' connect the entirety of human civilisation 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