A Colonnade

 
The Colonnade combines both the ornamental and structural elements of classical building. The columns, the arches, the vaults, fuse as a particular integral architectural type. Decorated for the festive season as this particular example, it reveals further its geometric qualities and ornamental possibilities.

The colonnade is a generous form, in that, it is not created out of an urgent functional necessity but merely to give some space over to contemplative walking. Giving space to less urgent funtions is of course an act that comes from the civilising impulse. If the Renaissance was a period that upheld the value of thought and contemplation, it makes sense to realise how well the colonnade was used in the architecture of this period.

We seem to be living in the 'mannerist' phase of modernism. Fundamentally modernists sought the freedom to conceive architectural form from scratch. They wanted an architecture that was 'self-made' from new principles based on what seemed to be the indications of a new kind of life based on what technology could deliver. That world has actually been created. The cost has been high. Having a tap is useful but it makes us waste water, just to give one simple example. This brave new world has a specific architecture that matches its agenda.

The theory, at least in the democratised world, is that the power rests with the people. In substance though, the ability to influence events seems to rest with the big players in the world of business, rather more than, for example, philosophers. Is this a success for business or a failure for philosophy? Too much internally referenced discourse has perhaps resulted in its current poor standing as a discipline in the eyes of the public but a discipline must not be judged only by the quality of its contemporary disciples. There is a history of ideas that exist like steps on a staircase. We must not destroy the steps as we ascend lest we want to descend again. Philosophy must make itself more available outside of the academic walls. Everyone has a right to think and it is a right that must be used, if only to learn to make life a little tidier. The ways in which things are done depend on the assumptions made about life itself. In human undertakings, it is the quality of thought that drives both procedures and outcomes. There would seem to be a wide array of forces that motivate the diversity of thoughts. If societies remain interested in cohesion, how can they dispense with philosophy, or as I understand philosophy to be: the study of collective thought?

A space that encourages thought, symbolising in its very form the act of squaring things off is indeed a great invention. It's been around for a while and we've stopped wondering out aloud about things. The sounds of murmuring that once echoed in the Renaissance colonnades, inside or outside the chiostri, were the sounds of thoughts being ingested. Society made progress outside the realms of blind faith and desperate hunger as a result. All over the lands where things are moving too quickly, the idea of progress must now be reviewed. We need to think again. We need to build again those spaces where some real thinking can be done: a place to stand or even to walk. A poet might use the colonnade as an allegory of time imagining the pillars of the histories moving and coming around again.

Roma, 23 12 2006