Architecture and Destruction

by Stefan Georgievski

Architecture, by nature, is an act of politic. From its design stage, architects primarily are solving problems with functional and formal aspects of the building, negotiating within themselves, planning carefully step-by-step, sometimes even making revolutions or terror. The new edifice, on an empty plot in the city, is bringing changes to the landscape not only visually, but socially. Between its users and neighbors new social relationships emerge, shaping a new realm. It changes the conditions of living and builds the environment where we live in.

A project for a building, once completed, can and will change the society that builds it. A building, act of architecture, could directly catalyze a transformation of social, economic and political fabric. The emerging new architecture in the world brings hope and faith of a better world. The spectator admires the courage and boldness of an architectural sign, believing that everything is possible. All problems are solvable. With skillful use of technology and space, architects of today, more than ever, can shape and create a world without scarcity and fear. Brighter future. We can build the perpetuum mobile, the tower of Babel, produce abundance of resources and improve the human life on global scales. We can shape a better world.

So, the role of the architect is instrumental, not expressive. Real architecture is a tool, sign and manifesto, that motivates to think, to do, to become, to know, and also to pass away, to inspire, be an echo and vestige, new soil for other acts and future to shape. Architecture shouldn’t be something that follows up the event but be a leader of events. It can become initiator and an active participant of a massive change of the society. Expressive architecture is a product of architect – conformist. This is not creation it’s a mere execution of the will of investors, embracing the current regressive spatial and social order. The architect is becoming a pyramid builder, a slave. “The practice of architecture today is protected from confrontation with changing political conditions in the world within a hermetically sealed capsule of professionalism, which ostensibly exists to protect its high standards from the corrupting influence of political expediency and merely topical concerns.” (Woods, 1995) Albert Speer's buildings were like Adolf Hitler's speeches: huge, hammeringly repetitious, banal but filled with machine-like-force. Language of power; big buildings that intimidate the people. The grandiosity of his architectural fantasy belongs to a whole tradition of visionary architecture, which encompasses idealist architects like the 18th century Frenchmen Boullée and Ledoux, but larger. In fact, a debased 18th century neoclassicism has long been the universal language of political power from Leningrad to Paris—and even Washington. By wedding neoclassicism to Hitler’s Kampf, Speer could have killed the style. But the style emerges not only in dictatorships, but in corrupt societies like Macedonia and others (even democratic) that glorify the power of the government.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of the government. Government should be afraid of the people!” (V)

Change within the society doesn’t necessarily come by building, but by destroying the monuments corrupt architects create. The fall of Berlin Wall meant liberation and gave hope for new era of cooperation. It restored the faith in people that better days are coming. V with a Guy Fawkes mask destroyed Houses of Parliament in one big firework as a symbol of change and an end of a corrupted regime. Demolishing architecture of terror gives me hope for freedom. Flatten the walls. Create freescapes.

Reference:
Woods, Lebbeus “Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act”, 1995
V for Vendetta (the movie), 2005
The Zeitgeist Movement