Mount Laurel
by Duany & Plater-Zyberk
Revivalism and Modernism
"Being a historically modern construct, style is a by-product of an understanding of the world that dissects time into distinct and subsequently perceived, unique periods - it is a technological (manmade) way of compartmentalizating history. The artificial parenthesis placed around certain periods in certain places by some historians are responsible for what we have been trained to know as styles - wether it be Greek style, Mission style, Tudor style, Mediterranean style, Charleston style...., the list is endless and grows ever more specific. When history is understood this way, two approaches to architectural practice ultimately result - revivalism and modernism. It is these two attitudes that dominate current architectural practice. Stylistical revivalists, which is what many (not all) traditional architects are, copy these particular periods or rather the motifs from these periods with little understanding or consideration of their constructional (tectonic) or symbolic origin. Modernists reject these stylistic periods as being nothing but of passing historical interest, irrelevant to "today". In place of copying historic or regional styles they choose to "invent" personal styles."
Michael Mesko
"Choice
or Fate"
"The
New Urbanist debate breaks down into two opposing camps. On one side
are the stylistic revivalists - those who encourage codifying style
into their urban plans and on the other side are the modernists who
suggest style is irrelevant and that any New Urbanist plan should
allow for a healthy dose of modernist architecture in their communities
- at the very minimum some "Frank Lloyd Wright Style" or some other
"modernist lite style" sprinkled here and there. The
Revivalists, believing it to be the only way of guaranteeing good
architecture, paralyze the practice of architectural design by limiting
its expression to one or more collections of historical motifs (the
Greek Revival model, the Victorian model, etc...). In this scenario
the authority and the responsibility of the builder or architect is
totally undermined. His / Her concern becomes less, -'How do I apply
tradition to the circumstances of this client and context and thus
make good urban space and enduring and appropriate architecture?'-,
than -'Do I have enough acroteria and anthemion and baseless Doric
to qualify as Greek?'-, or whatever motifs are necessary to achieve
the prescribed style.
The New Urbanists who carry the banner for modernist styles forget that the foremost underlying premise of the modernist approach assumes each building to be a idiosyncratic expression of the architect and his/her private ideas. Thus the idea that a building should be appropriate relative to its rank among other buildings is impossible since each modernist building is a self contained and closed system or language. Modernist architecture, incapable of making cities of discernable hierarchal legibility, is then quite contrary to the hierarchy New Urbanist plans go to great lengths to establish. New Urbanists have laudably distinguished in their plans some streets, spaces, sites, and buildings as more important than others. Modernist architecture in a traditional plan is oxymoronic."
Michael
Mesko
Architecture,
Style and Type
Malugen
House, Rosemary Beach, Florida
by
Eric Watson
"If
style, modernist or revivalist, leads to undesirable ends, then the
usefulness of this attitude towards history should be questioned. One
of the ways to rid style from current discourse is to simply remove
the manmade parenthesis that currently surround historical periods,
opening the way for a cross comparison of all traditional (and even
some modernist) architecture. When
something very general through time reoccurs with undeniable frequency
it can be identified as a type of "something" with many particular examples. As
architecture and city-building have always been concerned with four
very general things: the way we build buildings, the content of buildings,
how buildings relate to other buildings and spaces, and how buildings
alter existing contexts - these general concerns can be identified as
types. Recognized
as structural types, building types, urban types and types of modification,
each can serve as a heading under which every particular example (regardless
of time or context) can be classified. Understood this way the practice
of architecture involves itself with the adaptation of appropriate particular
examples (models) to contemporary circumstances and contexts.
Michael Mesko
Nieuw Terbregge, Rotterdam
Rail Road Avenue, North Augusta, South Carolina
"Style is not an art-historical fossil, nor a restrictive positivist concept of a modernist academia...It has been disqualified by the Modern Movement at the beginning of the XXth century; however the same ferocious 'Style' enemies found nothing better than 'International Style' to promote their 'styleless' works! Style remains an unavoidable concept to define and evaluate any serious work of art. The obsession to reformulate its conceptual complexity into less controversial concepts and its elimination alltogether might just reduce our theoretical paraphernilia in the context of discussing, designing and describing architectural artifacts!
We might consider to qualify style as, - the support of coherence, consistence, syntax and formal elegance, - of sensitive tectonic discourse, - of compositional and proportional excellence, - of correct reflection of typological and morphological conditions and urban or landscape context, - of appropriate articulation of iconographical and artistical elements, - of just expression of character of program and hierarchy, - of refined expression of a sense of place, etc. within an architectural language... If we also acknowledged architecture as an integral part of a popular, understandable and communicable artistical and urban culture - based on its historical traditions of tectonics, of representation and symbolism - , it might be possible to overcome the confusion associated to the concept of style, often misunderstood as a revivalism of historical styles, or as a replicative repetition of historic precedents.
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