Stephen Elliott
IDC 4001H
A few months ago, I sat down on a train ride home in the early afternoon. The friend with whom I’d been returning to Long Island, was making a joke out of my scratchy beard, insisting I looked homeless. Beside us sat an elegant German woman, maybe thirty years of age, who had been laughing along with my friend’s jokes. She agreed that I looked homeless, and used my appearance to segue into a conversation about architecture in Coach stores, the brand for which she designed. She told us that her task was to design a store in such a way that people felt welcomed, almost ushered inside yet upon entrance that they must fit the bill to pay the bill. That is, the innards of the store itself were designed to exude a sense of elegance and inimitable lavishness, qualities only those who can afford designer leather associate themselves with. Skaters with itchy beards like myself would be either turned away in intimidation or lured by a lust for something greater than what we are.
At the time, I could hardly conceive of how it was possible, though the concept itself didn’t seem far off from reality. It makes sense as a marketing strategy; catering to the elite through design seems like normal behavior for a high-end brand. After that conversation, I started to become acutely aware of how buildings were designed—both inside and outside—and how it affected my perception.
Thus, upon reading the Edifice Complex I felt as though I rode the same wavelength as Sudjic, although to a much different end. Whereas Sudjic ruminates the meaning of architecture and its function as an expression of power, especially on a macro scale, I believe its use is more ubiquitous. Sudjic does not rule out usage beyond expression, but I do believe there is more weight in the act of building itself, as opposed to the appearance of said building. Did William Levitt create the modern suburb to express his undying love for monotony, or perhaps to marginalize the middle class with uniformity in both physical and metaphorical ceilings? Or did he build gridded neighborhoods amid the farms of Long Island for the sake of creating a safe haven for whites to climb the social ladder? I’d argue more towards the latter; that he chose to capitalize on an emerging market with a revolutionary (albeit boring) innovation. The point is not that architects are greedier than they are expressive, it’s that not all architects are in the monument making business, and the study of architecture does not solely rest on grandiosity. It is indeed an art form, but one that is genuinely grounded in practicality, and one that does not stray far from its nature.
A palace is not a palace without a king. A column is not lawful without a lawful roof to support. The Pantheon is just a broken bowl that lets the rain in without the icons and the altar. Thus the meaning and expression of architecture as a form is transient, as is the nature of expression itself. Not only does it change from architect to architect, but also from experience to experience. To some, standing before a courthouse evinces a feeling of intimidation, to others a sense of power. The statue of Caesar, which remains disassembled in the courtyard of the Vatican museum, is a parody of imperial power to us, but to an ancient Roman plebian it was a reminder of their ruler’s towering reign. It’s easier to make magic out of marble than it is to make meaning.
