Architecture and anthropology

[Keith Hart]

Could be another Group, but let's see if we can rustle up some interest here. Came out of the thread on cities as a western phenomenon.

[Keith Hart]

In the last year I have attended two workshops involving architects, one a multidisciplinary experimental affair in Dover run by John Wood and focused on design (including design of money), the other in the architecture studio of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in Basel. Both experiences were fascinating for me, but I want to talk about the second here.

Herzog and de Meuron have a claim to being the most famous architects in the world today. They designed the 'Bird's Nest' stadium for the Beijing Olympics, the Tate Modern and many other avant garde buildings. Apart from a thriving practice employing 300 people with an average age of 30, they run the architecture studio of Zurich Polytechnic and teach at Harvard. Every year 25-30 Harvard architecture students do a city field project with H & M. Last year it was Nairobi. They quickly found that 80% of the city's population live in informal settlements, so informality became an important issue and I was drafted to talk about it. My presentation was ludicrously overpitched and was described with reason as more like an inaugural lecture. But that it not the point of this story.

After a day of the workshop, we all went to the H & M offices and were given an hour of Pierre de Meuron's time. Much of this was about the Beijing stadium, but it also included a glimpse of many of their other buildings. Pierre mentioned that he thought of the stadium as a very 'human' construction. I asked him what he meant by that, but he is a born teacher (hence all the academic work and the hundreds of young apprentices) and he turned the question by asking me what I thought a human building might be. I replied that I tend to think of buildings as either human or fascist (Pierre's assistant muttered that it was impossible for a building to be fascist), something intended to dominate by its bulk like the Pyramids. I often ask myself why the Louvre, Europe's longest building and monumental for sure, doesn't feel like a fascist building to me. Perhaps it's the ratio between the height of the buildings and the space between them or the very human decoration of the facade with historical figures. But I don't have a systematic answer.

Pierre then explained what he meant by the term in relation to the stadium. It is built in such a way that people entering it never pass under some heavy gateway, but ride escalators up the spiral frame. The Chinese authorites wanted a soccer pitch after the games, so H & M started with a rectangle inside an oval and made the stadium a circle. He emphasized two aspects of this: human means democratic and everyone at a given level was the same distance from the centre; and then he said something I found pretty amazing. Perfect geometrical form does not occur in nature, but we can imagine and realise it in construction and this brings us closer to the idea of our common humanity. Ancient Greece lives!

We asked him about the experience of building the stadium. Were the Chinese authorities restrictive or coercive? No, he said. Once we had negotiated the contract, they left us alone and made a big effort to solicit public responses to the design. Politics entered into the contruction only once: H & M had designed some rather subdued lighting which didn't fit very well with a Chinese aesthetic. The mayor of Beijing came to see the unveiling of the lights one evening and brought his two teenage children. They protested that the architects had thousands of colours at their disposal and ought to use more of them. So they did, rather successfully as it turned out. Otherwise Pierre said two factors made the building possible: the recent development of software capable of making such a complex design and the availability of 8,000 skilled workers capable of working with bent concrete.

There was much else that inspired me about this visit, but I will leave it there. I don't claim originality for these observations, but they came as a revelation to me. Architects, it now seems, get to be anthropologists who engage with the world practically at every level: physical, aesthetic, technical, economic, social, political. Before Basel my fantasy for my young daughter was that she would become a European junior ski champion. Now I wanted her to grow up to be an architect with a passion for winter sports.

[Eeva Berglund]

Architects and planners are fundamental to contemporary life, even if they are responsible for only a fraction of the dwellings occupied by people globally. Like H + DM I suppose they also have to be anthropologists of sorts in that they theorise about society and people's use of space. Much of it is normative, especially when it becomes government policy, and so I sincerely hope that anthropologists, who are alert to the inter-penetrations of technical and value-laden, will join those discussions. I'm trying, though so far with minimal success!

Anyway, I have a particular beef with this one, since H + DM have been in talks with Helsinki's city leaders to design a water-front hotel in an extremely prominent part of the city, in a predictably prominent fashion. (I must observe though that the Tate Modern conversion by the same team was refreshingly understated and done with great appreciation for the original architecture). I have no idea if this is true, but wouldn't be surprised if it were, but H + DM are reputed to have spent only one day in Helsinki on the job before submitting their ideas. Worth remembering here that this is the leardership of a small city in a small country that's trying to impress the rest of the world.

I have no time for blanket denunciations of modernism, of which a subset was once known as 'the international style', but given architecture's role in helping elites turn their ambitions into concrete, I wouldn't hesitate to correct a few architectural misconceptions of today either.

[John McCreery]

Eeva Berglund said:

I have no time for blanket denunciations of modernism, of which a subset was once known as 'the international style', but given architecture's role in helping elites turn their ambitions into concrete, I wouldn't hesitate to correct a few architectural misconceptions of today either.

Eeva, I wonder how you will respond to the project that has reshaped the Yokohama skyline and aroused Ruth's and my interest in city planning. Please have a look at http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f23_yokohama.html , then spend a few minutes browsing what you find if you do a Google search for "Yokohama Minato Mirai 21". Tell us what you think.

Keith, would also like to hear your thoughts.

[Keith Hart]

Well, Yokohama looks stunning. I am not sure about the Landmark Tower, but I am a sucker for waterfronts and the bridge looks great. Hard to tell what to look for without some clues. Durban is the same size, but more run down and aspiring to be a world city (!). They have built a fancy stadium for the World Cup, but there's nothing like the same money available. At least we were just listed by Lonely Planet in the top ten family beach resorts worldwide. Maybe we should set up a Helsinki, Yokohama, Durban comparison!

John McCreery said:

Eeva Berglund said:

I have no time for blanket denunciations of modernism, of which a subset was once known as 'the international style', but given architecture's role in helping elites turn their ambitions into concrete, I wouldn't hesitate to correct a few architectural misconceptions of today either.

Eeva, I wonder how you will respond to the project that has reshaped the Yokohama skyline and aroused Ruth's and my interest in city planning. Please have a look at http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f23_yokohama.html , then spend a few minutes browsing what you find if you do a Google search for "Yokohama Minato Mirai 21". Tell us what you think.

Keith, would also like to hear your thoughts.

[John McCreery]

Keith Hart said:

Maybe we should set up a Helsinki, Yokohama, Durban comparison!

I'm game. Eeva, how about you? Keith, since this is your suggestion, why don't you lead off by telling us something about Durban to which Eeva and I can respond.

P.S. If you are interested, I can upload the text of the presentation that Ruth and I gave at the SEAA meeting in Taipei.

[Eeva Berglund]

In haste - packing to move to Helsinki! So no chance of exploring the site right now John, but I'll get to it once I'm in a more settled mode, I promise.

But Yokohama does look stunning, reminded me of my short visit last autumn to Shanghai, a place which couldn't fail to impress on one the significance of architecture for political aspiration. In fact, I was stunned, the place did weird things to my experience of being me, as it were. And as our guide rattled on as if we were all amateur anthropologists wishing to hear about his relationship to his mo-in-law and how he bought a pet dog (!) with the express aim of getting it to chew up his own mother's heirloom furniture so he could get what he really wanted from ikea etc. etc., the suspicion grew in me that he too experienced himself as somehow of the mass of buildings and infrastructure projects being built around him. Some claim the ground is sinking underneath it.

There's a lot to be looked at in planning and architecture. Bring on the comparisons - but I shouldn't let myself be sidetracked from the business of clearing out this house for much longer.

[Eeva Berglund]

Sounds good to me! Please do send your text. Now I really MUST go.

[Keith Hart]

You are right to ask me to put up on this one, John. I will have to temporise since I am trying to combine a family holiday with research in two places and several writing projects. I have recently encountered city planners in the context of a decision to replace a good part of South Africa's largest street market with a shopping mall. This has provoked furious protest which achieved a degree of focus at a book and photo exhibition launch where I spoke in late June. That speech is reproduced here. I am afraid that for the time being I will be only able to supply sporadic snippets like this. But it is related to the problem of informality I raised in the context of H & dM.


John McCreery said:

Keith Hart said:

Maybe we should set up a Helsinki, Yokohama, Durban comparison!

I'm game. Eeva, how about you? Keith, since this is your suggestion, why don't you lead off by telling us something about Durban to which Eeva and I can respond.

P.S. If you are interested, I can upload the text of the presentation that Ruth and I gave at the SEAA meeting in Taipei.

[John McCreery]

Eeva, best of luck with your move. Keith, sporadic snippets are great. Ruth and I are also in motion. Next Tuesday we fly to Boston, where daughter Kate is starting an MPP in Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard, son-in-law Pat is job-hunting, and John and Ruth will be lending a hand with the grandkids (Keega 3, Fiona 1) and the dogs (two great Danes named Chloe and Shelby) until things settle.

Here are the images that Ruth and I used in our presentation. Without them the current text (see uploaded file) won't make much sense.

[John McCreery]

Whoops. Mispelled grandson Keegan's name. Funny thing happened. The usual edit within 15 minutes capability seems to have disappeared when the text file was uploaded.

[Simone Abram]

Hi,
There are some good studies of the building of the Cardiff Bay waterfront if you're interested. Personally, I'm not such a fan of the whole 'waterfront' thing. I am a bit more sceptical of the fashion/fad mechanism in architecture... so I hope you will be including a view on subaltern resistance too!

[Francine Barone]

Keith, thanks for starting this thread. I know that there is a separate architecture group, but I'm pleased to draw connections with the urban theme. I'm a little late to the party, but I'd like to go back to your original post.

One issue I'm exploring at this stage in my thesis is the use of public and private space in community life in cities, and I find that I am looking at architectural features hand in hand with social features. There are several points I'm interested in; for instance, the buildings themselves, they way the structures are designed, and demarcations between urban, suburban and rural living (particularly where they intersect). I agree when you say that architects get to be anthropologists. They really need to be. When people feel uncomfortable in man-made surrounds, like poorly planned cities or "sick" buildings, it usually feels like it's because the humanity was left out.

I'm currently pursuing how external spaces in a city - streets, plazas, parks and shopping areas - are modified throughout the years to suit (changing) needs for public interaction and socializing as well as more pragmatic reasons like transit or shopping. Modifications are structural/architectural, in the sense of knocking down old buildings and putting up new ones, but also social, such as the division of spaces by different demographic groups (possibly resulting in the formation of bounded communities and related inequalities). Architecture (including landscape architecture) plays a contributing role in such circumstances, where the architect becomes de facto politician, economist and socio-urban planner. Likewise, while buildings themselves can create an atmosphere or have an attitude (be it democratic or fascist) they are also subjected to external influences when they are left to fall into disrepair, are rebuilt, altered, refurbished or gentrified.

I'm looking forward to a Helsinki, Yokohama, Durban comparison here when you find the time.


Keith Hart said:

In the last year I have attended two workshops involving architects, one a multidisciplinary experimental affair in Dover run by John Wood and focused on design (including design of money), the other in the architecture studio of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in Basel. Both experiences were fascinating for me, but I want to talk about the second here.
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