Professional Documents
Culture Documents
181-dez94
stylistic rules is relative. Styles emerge and spread responding to pressures that
are external to the discipline, to problems raised in terms of technology,
economy, functionality, policy, ethics. Conversely, architectural solutions are
rarely free of extra-disciplinary implications. Both the treatment of architecture
as a mere reflection of socio-cultural processes and a critique couched
exclusively in terms of symbolic allegory or pure aestheticism are demeaning of
architecture's specificity. Even worse is to find representational arguments
disguised as operational values and vice versa: another disastrous legacy of the
past, that that should be ascribed to the anti-intellectualism that permeates the
Modern Movement.
Criticism and criteria have identical roots, all criticism implies some criteria and
neither criteria nor criticism can be taken as expressions of imperative truth.
Admitting this fact does not mean accepting a whimsical subjectivism operating
in an "anything goes" context. It is pertinent to demand that criticism make
explicit its criteria and show reasonableness in its exposition of premises and
arguments- supported by precise description of architectural works and their
context. How would we judge what we do not know to describe? Almost always
"impressions" distort more than enlighten. The definition of descriptive
guidelines also implies judgment; the identification of context opposes the
fetichization of the isolated building, justified by the proven disasters
engendered by that attitude rather than on "wishful thinking" or pure ideology.
The Modern Movement polemics did not tolerate criticism. Its orthodox
historiography was not interested in re-defining and re-systematizing guidelines
for description, analysis and interpretation. However, Le Corbusier and Lucio
Costa seem more perceptive than Pevsner, Giedion and co. The French
insinuates, the Brazilian claims that there is no incompatibility between the
Modern architectural revolution and the academic tradition. In light of the
contributions of Rowe, Colquhoun and Frampton, this tradition seems to be a
good starting point for strengthening a critical capability. Architectural elements,
and elements of composition schemes, parti, character and characterization
strategies are examples of a vocabulary to rediscover and refine- since a
parallel can be drawn between the loss of authority of the classical tradition that
led to the formulation of that vocabulary in the 19th century and the lack of
hegemonic authority of any Modern school at the end of this century.
The current fascination with pointing and labeling trends reflects a situation
where architectural eclecticism is the rule, and architecture joined the fashion