ARCHITECTONICS

Dr. Hossam Aboulfotouh

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Ideology has become in the forefront of scientific debates, searching for its global paradigm that shall dominate the entire planet. Marx discussed the socio-economic concept of ideology in 19^th century, transforming its ancient concept of metaphysics into a day to day socio-economic relations, among the society's members. In the realm of architecture, the ancient concept of what is now called ideology should be understood carefully in order to recognize the correlation between man’s ideology and the architecture identity.

The oldest written literature on how man constitutes his ideology is the brilliant work of Plato that titled “Timaeus” (330BC) and that was inspired by the Pythagorean school of thought (550BC), a pre-Hellenistic version of the ancient Egyptian pyramidal ideology (3070BC). We may conclude it in that “man observes and tries to understand the laws of God in nature that upon which he constitutes his common belief or his ideology.” Then he codes his ideology with the spatial language that we call “Architecture”, accenting his identity within all the places that he was able to access or takeover. Consequently, he assigns values and potentials to the living places, by categories. We may classify them in three groups: the place(s) from which the ideology has sparked, the place(s) that the ideology identifies as ideal locations for its seat(s) and continuity, and the accessible places that are observed as economic potentials and for dominating the new ideology over the old ideologies.

As this process continued over the history of humankind, the new ideology was always accompanied with a new architectural trend that was usually empowered by the governance system that generated it, leading to the vulnerability of the architectural trends of the old ideologies. We may observe today that many countries contain the array of the three places of the old ideologies. These palaces experience different types of spatial changes over time. Usually, the third category of places undergo dramatic changes; they become the bazaars for many architectural trends since their societies have never generated a spatial identity for their themselves; they always adapt with the architectural products of other’s ideology. In the three categories, the architectural products of the old trends inter into the domain of historicity. We call them now the architectural heritage; the oldest of them take place in both the ideal and the seat places of the old ideologies. The term "architectural heritage" empowers only their physical continuity, without re-empowering their architectural trends that include both the old design philosophy and the old building techniques. Many of the nowadays applications of the centemporaneity approach do not re-empower the design philosophy of the old authentic trends as much as they empower the nowadays industries of building materials; however, one of its effective endeavors is the works of Hassan Fathy.

Today, within the paradigm of the new global ideology, some may argue that many trends will be vulnerable and both the seat and the ideal places of the old ideologies may become too the bazaars of many trends. Within such country, generating a new collective architectural trend that represents its local ideologies needs a political-will that accordingly will give a competitive advantage to the constitute, effective and replicable trend. Architectural education alone will not be able to realize this goal, as there are no legitimate or common thought among the educators. Architects everywhere are liberalized to create or to follow such trend of any ideology; however, the political-will controls the legal framework and generates the incentive policies for supporting the industries of specific building-materials. In the realm of architecture, the global ideology and its allied architectural trends, supports mainly the capital-intensive but material-industries of the developed countries; it is primarily a market-oriented approach. Consolidating the competitive and/or the comparative advantage for the country’s own architecture identity that encourages its labor-intensive but local material industries may, thus, be a good alternative policy for many developing countries in the era of globalization, particularly for housing the urban poor. The competitive trend is the one that consolidates the local markets and speaks on behalf of the collective local ideologies, accenting the place’s identity.

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