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INTERNATIONAL
XXII
WORLD CONGREES OF ARCHITECT, 2005 ISTANBULE
Cities: Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS
ACADIMIC
CONTREPUTIONS
PAPER NUMBER-461
THE GLOBAL IDEAOLOGY AND THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE,
Between Vulnerability and Empowerment
Dr. Hossam
Aboulfotouh
Abstract:
The
paper discusses the global ideology and its effect on the architectural
identity of cities. Its theoretical background is based on the works of Plato
and Marx. The metaphysical concept of ideology may mean that man observes and
tries to understand the laws of God in nature that upon which he constitutes or
adds to the common dogmas of his society. Then, they code it with the spatial
language of architecture, accenting their identity within all their living
places. Usually, they assign values to three places by their potentials: the
place at which the ideology was constituted, the place that they identify as
ideal location for their main city and continuity, and the accessible places
that have economic potentials. Any new ideology is usually accompanied with new
architectural trend that is empowered by the regime of that new ideology,
leading to the vulnerability of the old trends. Today, 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 of many architectural
trends since their societies have never generated a spatial identity for their
cities; 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 the ideal 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. Within the paradigm of the new
global ideology, this paper argues on that unless there are such local
policies, many local but authentic trends will become vulnerable, and the ideal
places of the old ideologies may become too the bazaars of many trends.
1- BACKGROUND.
Ideology has become in the forefront of
scientific debates, searching for its global and developmental paradigm.
Ideology may mean different things to different intellectuals; some speak about
it in terms of religious principles and others observe it as a political
regime. Marx1 said: "ideology itself represents the production
of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, all that men say, imagine,
conceive, and include such things as politics, laws, morality, religion,
metaphysics, etc." In the realm of architecture, it may represent the
basic philosophy that architects and town planners interpret in the spatial
identities of their cities. In most cases, their creativity focuses on how they
use the technology of the day to providing the needs of their societies, in the
form of architectural and urban enclosures. They rarely establish a complete
new ideology; however, in many cases, their creative ideas improve the quality
of life of their cities as they integrate their ideas with the dominant
ideological paradigm of their societies. By this way, one can always perceives
the society's dominant ideology inherent in different spatial models within all
districts of the city. If that was the only process that was taken place in all
world cities, one could then walk in any city and read the incremental advances
of the design thoughts and the technological production modes for a single
ideological paradigm that was dominant along the history of that city.
In fact, the reality of many world cities
shows that other complex scenarios were taken place in them. Their dominant
ideological paradigms did change and accordingly their architects and town
planners were inspired by these changes, leading to a complete shift in the
spatial identity of many parts of these cities. Why this shift has taken place
in many cities? The simple answer of this question may be the change of the
political regime that enforced the change of the dominant ideological paradigm
and its corresponding production mode. Nevertheless, if some one speaks about
ideology in terms of religion, he will be confused about how ideological change
would take place without changing the religion, as in Muslim countries. One may
also think about the opposite: can two or more religious groups have the same
ideological paradigm of development and the same spatial identity? To answer
that, we should analyze first, what is ideology in the general term and what it
may mean in view of the modern approaches of development and in view of the new
concept of globalization.
2- DEFINING THE IDEOLOGICAL PARADIGM OF
DEVELOPMENT.
In Timaeus2, Plato discussed how
man understands the metaphysical laws of the cosmos and constitutes his common
beliefs. He said that God created the cosmos and all his creatures based on a
musical law that upon the perceptional mechanisms of the human beings work and
that enabled them to communicate with each other and with the nature. He
concluded that man's mental mind has a dual way of perception; it works based on
perceiving an idea about anything and its opposite, e.g., positive and
negative, good and bad, beauty and ugliness, and so on. Each idea has a musical
note and one direction of motion; thus, any two opposite ideas have opposite
directional motions. Man's mental mind observes and identifies them. That dual
way of mental perception enables human beings to make their logical judgement on all matters. Accordingly, they constitute
their dogmas about what is good and what is bad for their life.
Based on Plato's discourse2
on the process of creation, which was a revelation from God to an ancient
Egyptian profit, in the beginning god established the metaphysical law for
building the cosmos. Then, he constituted the diverse religious
principles for each profit according to the conditions of his day. However, the
metaphysical law represents the constant principal in all religions. It is the
main canon that links all religions about a core idea concerning the process of
creation and how the cosmos work. Accordingly, the difference between
religions, leaving a side any talk on the way of adoration, may concern the
diverse principles that further improving the quality of human relations and
justice as well as promoting the societies productivity modes
As known, religions include as well
developmental principles like the way of using and distributing the resources.
However, the way societies operationalize these
principals in different times and places, according to their needs and
resources, leads to the establishment of different ideological paradigms of
development within the domain of the same religion that represents their holy
canon. In this context, we should also differentiate between the doctrines of
such religion and the ideological paradigms of development of the same
religion. The religious doctrines concern mainly the minor differences in the
diverse modes of adoration.
In nineteenth century, Marx3 did
identify three concepts that influence the ideology of societies, namely: the
means of production, the mode of production, and the relation between
individuals. He did speak about ideology in terms of that life condition
affects the way the individuals think about the best way for their production.
Today, within the realm of the modern approaches of development and strategic
way of thinking4, if then one like to speak about ideology in the realm
of any religion he must define it as a paradigm of development. He should first
leave a side the metaphysical law and the society's way of adoration and speak
only about two concepts. The first is the dominant socio-political and
managerial regime and the second is the society's developmental strategy and
its corresponding policies, programs and actions. In many countries, these two
materialistic concepts are in harmony with the society's religious principals.
However, the developmental ideology is the socio-economic and the urban
managerial idea of the day that may not fit for tomorrow, contrary to the
sacred religious principles that live for last.
Marx1 has concluded, when he was
criticizing the old and the young Hegelian philosophers that ideology should
not be observed as a theological dogma. It concerns the production modes of the
society, it is the way of how individuals use resource and produce; and thus it
is changeable according to the change of place, people, and time. Besides, the
change in the technology of the day and the competitive economic status among
societies also affects it. In short, ideology as a man-made idea has a
relativistic degree of continuity according to its environment and should not
be observed as part of the absolute realm of cosmic, metaphysical and religious
constants.
Within the nowadays approaches of sustainable
development5, that ideological paradigm of development could be
portrayed in the following points.
(i) The strategy
that portrays the ideal socio-economic state that societies aim to accomplish
and transform their life conditions into a better off situation.
(ii) The array of golden and creative ideas of
urban policies that wise intellectuals formulate and believe they are ideal
solutions for their society's problems without worsening off the quality of
life and economic prosperity of other societies or blocking their freedom of
choice.
(ii) The criteria for guiding and evaluating the
society's state of development in line with the available resources, and
improving their quality of life and achieving their prosperity and welfare,
with respect to equity and equality.
(iv) The programs
and actions for promoting the productivity of cities and reforming their urban
environments and socio-economic mechanisms in efficient and effective ways, in
order to be able to compete locally and internationally.
(v) The managerial framework for creating the
autonomous system of governance and realizing the country's economic boom.
(vi) The creative philosophy behind spatial images that societies aim to
leave dominant in their places of living for last, by coding and accenting
their state of creativity and ideological identity in their architecture that
will become the heritage of their future generations.
3- THE ARCHITECTURAL TREND OF THE IDEOLOGICAL
PARADIGM.
Along the history of humankind, societies have
chosen the perfect places for their permanent settlements, in the river valleys
and close to water wells. They first lived in isolated tribal groups; then they
had gathered and formed larger societies that have almost the same tribal
ethics, same human races and same production modes. They have identified their
territorial jurisdiction on the lands that they were able to defend and that
supply them with the natural resources that secure their life. A developing but
primitive society of that sort should have established any primitive form of the
developmental ideology. Establishing that ideology means they are mentally
developed; they have thought first about god and the process of creation and
had been donated such religious principles that improved their cooperative life
and guided them to establish such primitive concept of organic solidarity6.
Societies that lived in the river valleys have
had the permanent sources of the first three basic needs: water, food and
cloth. This encouraged them too, to build permanent shelters in the safest places
in their lands. Logically, the primitive architecture of their shelters was the
output of their vernacular designs, their labor skills, and their modes of
production. The architectural forms of their buildings should indicate
indirectly their primitive ideological paradigm of development. At that stage,
the members of that society might not think of how efficient is
their ideological paradigm unless they did compare its outputs with that
of other nearby societies.
Besides, they will not think of building
something to live for last unless they did understand the laws of the nature by
searching on and developing the basic sciences: mathematics, astronomy,
physics, and chemistry. If they did reach this state of ideological development
then the architecture of their sacred buildings would be a perfect
interpretation of that advanced state in their days, taking into consideration
that their skills and production modes were improved too. The perfect example
of that old advanced society is the ancient Egyptian, the
They establish by this the architectural trend
for their public buildings that was supported by their governance. In that
trend, they coded by both geometrical and artistic way all their sacred
principles that form the bases of their ideological paradigm of development,
accenting their identity within all their living places. Usually, they assign
values to three places by their potentials: the place at which the ideological
paradigm of development was constituted, the place that they identify as ideal
location for their seat and continuity, and the accessible places that have
economic potentials.
The society that has succeeded to reach that
state in any time and at any place on earth would be inspired by the idea of
the hegemony on the third category of places. These places represent to them an
economic potential to further improving their prosperity and securing the
continuity and expansions of their civilization. As this process continued over
the history of humankind, the new ideological paradigm of development was
always accompanied with 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 ideological paradigms.
We may observe today that many countries
contain the array of the three places of the old ideological paradigms of
development. 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 either
have never generated a spatial identity for their themselves; or they always
adapt with the architectural products of other’s ideological paradigm. In the
three categories of places, 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
ideological paradigms. 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
in upper Egypt. The production mode of the day affects the building technique
but the design philosophy is some thing that speaks on behalf of the societies
dogmas or interprets such message that the designer was trying to say and code
in that spatial form. The latter may live longer and could be interpreted too
by the new building techniques. However, still the feeling that we all
experience when we observe such authentic design philosophy in a new style; it
remind us with authentic picture of that philosophy. We always feel that this
is not the original image; it is only a copy of the original. A pyramid built
of glass like that in
If we end up with that, new ideological
paradigm means new mode of production, then creative minds should then think of
new forms that commensurate with that new production mode. Using the old forms
or the old patterns with the new building technologies is what some wrongly
call the contemporaneity approach. Contemporaneity means using both the old design philosophy
and the old building technique for achieving the current needs of the
contemporary society, as long as the new production mode cannot achieve that
goal in efficient way in comparison with the old production mode. This hints to
that the capital intensive industries of the new building materials may not be,
in some cases, the most efficient way for housing the urban poor or conserving
the old districts. On the other hand, abstraction of the old patterns, by means
of contemporaneity is the law of the dead hand; it
means that the nowadays architects cannot create a new but perfect spatial
image of the day that commensurate with the new ideological paradigm, as the old
designers did.
4- ARCHITECTURE OF THE GLOBAL IDEOLOGICAL PARADIGM.
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 ideological paradigm of development needs a
political-will that accordingly will give a competitive advantage to the
constituent, 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. It encourages the country's
production mode that supports that architectural trend that accordingly reduces
the excessive building material imports of the country.
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. Within this new developmental paradigm,
architecture will become a product for sale. In the general term, the over all
concept of globalization does not differ from similar major ideological
paradigms of the great ancient civilizations of the past. However, these old
civilizations defined architecture as the art of physical creation by sacred
sciences and that made it the mother of all arts. Thus, it was sacred
profession for portraying the ideal values in spatial forms in order to serve
the human needs. One cannot be sure of that, in history, architecture never was
a product of business process that seeks profit maximization as an optimum
goal. A process that affects and be affected by the market
mechanisms, global policies and the entrepreneurial behaviors as we see it
today. Besides, it is difficult to know when architecture became a kind
of business: a product for sale to those who have been convinced to buy it.
Today we may face a dilemma in classifying the
old buildings of historic cities; what was a product for sale and what was not?
Terms like "historic building" or "architectural heritage"
are not clear definitions for this subject. In the contrary, the term
"vernacular architecture" may have signal meaning: the architecture that was not sold. It was a
product made by its users and that portrays their accumulated architectural
experience and socio-cultural ideological paradigm. In fact, combinations of
both products make the spatial identity of our historic cities: the inner cities
and the waterfronts. However, in many of these old cities, we may not see any
disagreement in the spatial interpretations of local culture and among its old
architectural products even if some of them have been the products of a
business process. The local culture was then very dominant to such an extent
that the language of the imported architectural trend was rephrased to be part
of the local architectural dialogue.
During the twentieth century, the world of
architecture has experienced enormous changes. Most architecture of the second
half of this century was merely a product for sale, with unified fashions like
cars. The architecture that had been produced in some countries and was good
for sale in their cities exported to other countries and dominated the
architectural business around the glob. Their trends were such intelligent that
conquered the native spatial behaviors and urban forms in many world cities.
These processes has contributed in such a way to build the new entrepreneurial
trend of architecture or the architecture of globalization, which has become
irreversible and generated many cultural and market issues. The market of new
building materials has become highly competitive and serves the interests of
mega-entrepreneurs in the first place, changing the production of traditional
building materials into a high consumption of imported building products. Such
new materials and architectural fashions dominate the world cities before
undergoing the rational processes of post-evaluation. The answer to which new
fashion should be replicated elsewhere is rarely traced, leading to a huge
consumption of imperfect architecture and its supporting goods, which was harm
to both the socio-cultural milieus and the authentic architectural identity of
many great old cities of the less developed countries. This is beside other
negative impacts on the local economies of these countries.
As a counter policy to that trend,
consolidating the competitive and/or the comparative advantage of 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. This is particularly for housing the
urban poor and conserving their old district. However, globalizing advanced
building technologies would not be anti-local development if they were
perfectly married with the local building materials for interpreting the local
authentic dialogue in their spatial forms, as well as keeping the country in
line with the global ideological paradigm of development. 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.
In this regard I would like to thank the
intelligent mind(s) that formulated such brilliant theme at this specific point
in time and put it in the forefront of scientific debates in this UIA's Congress. I am very much fascinated with the letter
"S" at the end of its theme, "Cities: Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS," marking the
plural frontier of the global architectural debates. It is not only a capital S
that may imply the global collectivity of our architectural profession, and its
products but it is also an italic, or tilted "S"
as it appears in the Congress bulletin. This may imply too allowing
diversity in orientation and deviation from the polarity of norms, e.g.,
dogmas, materials, prices, etc. The metaphoric frontier of "S" may,
therefore, indict that in such "Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS"
the global ideological paradigm will commensurate with the individual
liberty of cultures for accenting the local expressions. Both competitive
paradigms of ideology, the global and the local, will then live side by side
and support each other to paving the paths for creating the architecture of
excellence that would be the engines for city development. This may be the
optimistic image of the letter S.
On the contrary, one
can also observe it, as it criticizes the reality of cities or it warns us
about their future. The pessimistic eye may see that there will be no such
master trend appearing in the designs of the architectural goods or products of
many Bazaars that speaks on behalf of their localities, indicating the likely
negative externalities of the hegemony of globalization. The letter S in this
case may warn us and say: " I am the guard angel
of the polyphonic Bazaar, the poly-architectonic city of all times. It is the
free zone of exporting all architectural trends and the market of selling the
products of all architectural typologies without levying any protective or
conservative local tariff. It’s the Grand Bazaar of all nations, all human
races, all eras, all dogmas, all ideologies and all architectural thoughts; do
you have any problem with that? If you don’t care, I am here only to warn you
before travelling in time and entering into its
future paradigm; you may feel inside that you have lost the sense of place and
time. If afterwards you are still conscious enough, try to think about the
identity of my city; does it have any? Try to identify too, does it have any
sense of direction? I wonder if you can then observe any width or any length
for my Grand Bazaar; the real nature of it is not as you think; it is not such
small spot on the globe; it covers the whole surface of the globe. The false
notion is to think that our blue spherical world that we call it now Earth,
i.e., my Grand Bazaar, with all its architectural products could be shrunk and
cloned into an array of two dimensional market domains at every living spot on
its sphere. If at then you thought that this is the sort of perfect city image
that you were dreaming about, be sure that you are in the state of
unconsciousness. You can not clone the ten human races into a new prototype
creature(s), replacing all of you; the globe will be then the ugliest or the
most catastrophic environment. The merits inherited in the Blacks, the Reds,
the Yellows, and the Whites are allowing the diversity of, or in, their genetic
identities, while all of them are perfect, creative, and permanent members in
our Grand Bazaar. As I have said earlier, I have been asked only to warn our
future visitors of creative minds; this is my eternal duty at the main door of
our supreme Grand Bazaar. It is up to you then to warp the future spatial
images and economic states of its array of living architectural spots, the
minor Bazaars. If you are not sure about the outcomes of your next move, leave
the invisible but creative hand in them as is, or follow the perfect laws of
our Mother Nature."
The dual meanings inherent in the beauty of
placing the letter S at the end of the congress theme indicates the dual way of
observing the competing forces inherent in any paradigm. Based on Plato's
discourse2, any idea has a dual meaning in the mind of the thinkers.
They observe both or any of them based on the degree of stability of the
built-in tuning mechanizes of their mental minds, constituting by this the
golden balance of logic that is essential for guiding their life. Marx1
said, "contrary to the theological principals, ideology is not an
arbitrary concept." Ideological paradigms are the generation of our mental
minds. They should be in harmony with all the sacred principals of all
societies and should respect their cultural identities.
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