For much of the semester, we've talked about orality versus writing, as if the two were the only ways in which history was recorded, remembered, and recalled. This week, we see that architecture is a third way in which histories are captured. Indeed, architects often had liberty to do/say things via their structures that writers could not.
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo worries that "[t]he book will kill the building" (Hugo, 169). He fears that writing will replace the cultural authority that had been the domain of the architect. What will happen to buildings if they are no longer of import (beyond being structures)? Hugo needn't have worried.
When I recall the traveling I've done, and the pictures I've taken, buildings feature prominently (in both memory and pictures). I think fondly about the Eiffel Tower, Dublin Castle, the Plaza de Toros de las Ventas in Madrid (bull fighting ring), and other places that I've seen that are important for a variety of reasons. These buildings are historically significant as the sites of the histories of these cities/countries. Some of them are still important - like the bull fighting ring in Madrid - as they continue to be the sites of living history. While we certainly read books to prepare for travel, and even seek out books when we travel (the Book of Kells comes to mind), architecture still plays an important part in documenting the history of places.
Recently, the Clock Tower in the Old Town Square in Prague turned 600 years old. To commemorate this event, the city presented a spectacular digital map of this 600 year history. In a grand display of old meeting new, the events of the past 600 years were literally displayed upon the facade of the building. Print is undoubtedly important for capturing and preserving histories. But I don't think that the book has killed the building.
True, architecture remains and, as Hugo says at the top of p. 181, there will probably still be the occasional "great accident of an architect of genius." But I think Hugo's main point is that the prominence of architecture as "the dominant art," the art form where ALL popular ideas and knowledge deemed worth preserving was inscribed--is no more. He thought it was replaced with printing; if we buy the argument I guess the question is what is our dominant form of information preservation, and will it be overtaken by something else?
ReplyDeleteI think architecture is still pretty dominant. Think about all of the arguments and years it's taken to build something at Ground Zero. And think about the controversy over building a skyscraper that will distort views of the Empire State Building from some angles. Architecture may not be the main vessel through which a society is represented, but it is still important when it influences or threatens sentiments that society values.
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