Yet, though the overt mention of "ornament" has not resurfaced, there is a spirit of "ornament" - the spirit that is the essence of matter, as great artists, musicians and writers know something about. Call a rose by another name and it is still a rose -- here we go deeper: when the rose dies the spirit of the rose remains as an essence (or a memory, if you will). In an extreme illustration, if the rock I hold in my hand has the spirit of a rose, then looking past all materiality which is known to be fading, temporal and transient, I could say with not a little confidence that I have a rose. If the red rose I hold in my hand have the spirit of a rock, then while I say I hold a rose, I hold nothing when the rose dies in the habitual way of roses. Spirit is closer in distance to thought than it is to matter. Thoughts are not material, having no weight, no texture, no grain, no dimensions - yet thoughts are the essence of action and material. In a murder trial, for example, whether or not the crime was premeditated -in other words, did this thought exist?- is the crux of the matter in deciding for or against the gravest punishment. What is the motivation for much of today's architecture? In this particular thesis, the subject of interest is the high-rise building. What is the spirit of the high-rise?
In most cases, the high-rise is a wrapped core. The elevator core as a practical necessity to transport inhabitants vertically - that being established, the program of the building wraps itself around the core in stacked floors, and finally the whole building is wrapped again in a "skin" which is the subject of much research in recent years in the form of facade treatment, technology and design. The skin is justifiably important, mediating between the weather elements and the inhabited interior, and its fine-tuning could translate into energy savings which is an important topic in a world concerned about climate issues. Yet here another old debate: one which in my view has not ended and should not be ignored until interested parties come to each their own satisfied conclusions - the question of the division between the architect and the engineer.
The spirit of "ornament" is not the spirit of "architecture" (whether or not the latter encompasses in some degree the former is open to discussion.) Yet, in the contemporary field, architects have not recognized, and if recognizing they have not deliberated, and if deliberating they have not articulated, the existence and nature of the spirit of architecture. This is perhaps a sweeping statement, considering that there are small houses and buildings which endeavor to experiment and converse about the spirit of architecture (or, also known as, the meaning of architecture,) but in the high-rises, particularly the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, one could not sense it - as dry as a desert is the seeming oasis of architecture.
In fact -and I refuse to blush- even the term "spirit", and such terms as "meaning", or "essence", is kept inside dark closets in the elite schools of architecture. Rationalism reigns, structuralism is respected, materiality viewed with some interest, environmental or green design the new secret police chief. All these being means to various ends, the end not in essence "architecture." To avoid confusion, at this point one would want to define the meaning of architecture. This thesis student says: the meaning is in life and not death. Death is in the dearth of spirit, the dearth of spirit is the essence of doing things without conviction. Doing things with conviction but in the wrong way would yield a terrible failure but not a boring banality. Then, I also ask, who should be an architect? Should I say, each to his own? Even in Manhattan the myriad of buildings each have their admirers and detractors, and countless others that are boring banalities - yet as a whole tapestry we cannot but be impressed by the majesty of a landscape of towers. My opinion is as such: the high-rise that stands alone, because of the verticality and the harshness of its figure rising upwards, could not be but arrogant - this arrogance reminiscent of the arrogance of the tower of Babel. It speaks of the mortal effort to achieve, to rise above, and yet this mortal body is bound to earth and returns to dust - if it be without spirit. The castles and fortresses of old, though majestic and towering, speak of a different kind of spirit, one of defence, of royalty, of country, of piety, of loyalty - yes, and even of community, of kingdom, of family and of life: these things by which even the modern man could feel his heart stirred - such as we see reimagined in movies. Yet today, the tall towers and skyscrapers speak of very little other than the one thing: capital. The dollar sign. A pauper could be instantly a king if he had but money. Money as flag and banner has from the very beginning been the genesis of the high-rise. When land became expensive, landowners built more stories to gather more rent. With the old masonry construction, certain heights could be reached, but a limiting factor is the massive bearing walls swelling and eating away at the ground floors which are the most rentable and profitable. The height reachable is also limited by the human ability to travel vertically, five stories being the comfortable limit. With the invention of the elevator, the height was doubled. With the introduction of steel skeletal construction, the massiveness of the bearing walls at ground floor was done away with, enabling the height of the building to again be doubled. Indeed it was not a structural limit that barred the high-rises of earlier years from rising higher - the limit was profit. Hence, both the steel skeleton construction and the elevator are economic solutions. The skyscraper was generated from a dollar sign.
Singapore was generated from a dollar sign. The British had recognized the strategic location of the island as a gateway in the South-east Asian trade route, and bought the island to turn it into a free port under the empire. Business and revenue was the banner. The first immigrants to settle in Singapore were the Chinese from China and the Indians from India -- they came bringing not their loyalties but wallets to be filled and sent home to their families. There was no question about who they were culturally or nationally - Singapore was only a place to make some money. With the second generation, Singapore started to become a home. Further down the road, the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, and afterwards the independence from the British and merger and subsequent split from Malaysia were events that mixed and cemented the nation. Following the split from Malaysia, the communist saga and the race riots, Singapore gradually developed an identity, fostered in no small part by a national school curriculum which inculcated in young children the ideas of social harmony, racial tolerance and respect for authority. The government which developed such a program to nurture identity was also the decision maker behind all economic strategies including the choice of industries to build up, the focus of education, the promotion of a tourism image, the last of which led to the creation of the Merlion. This half-lion, half-fish creation became known as the symbol of Singapore, testified to by thousands of photographs by tourists through the years posing with the water fountain sculpture made in its likeness. It was a devious success, almost 'cool' in the way gaming and hacking could be considered as such, the best known evidence being its appearance in the 1998 Japanese cult-animation series "Cowboy Bebop."
At this point, the project of this thesis is a “Singapore high-rise”: following the previous arguments we can see this phenomenon (Singapore highrise) as being generated from the original expression “$ $”. The thesis project is a discarding of baggages - we discard the dollar signs and we discard the genealogy and generation of both phenomenons “Singapore” and “high-rise”. Looking at only the present, the living and the remaining, we generate the project Singapore high-rise. It can be said to be a clean-slate project in spirit. It defines “Singapore”, “high-rise”, “architecture, “ornament.” If it cannot define, it discusses.
(----INSERT #1: High-rise: Singapore version
Necessity:
Human beings need a place to live.
Factor:
Many people need to live on a piece of land.
Necessary evil:
High-rise.
Yet there are benefits. 1) Raised off the ground, the winds are stronger - a much appreciated phenomenon here. 2) In a building full of people, there is a sense of safety. Singapore children grew up never knowing the deep darkness of a farmhouse out in the country at night. The noise and the lights never ceases, they might be muted at some point, but the corridor lamps and every vibration of the inhabitants find their way, attenuated, into private spaces of others. Even if there is no material seepage, there is mental knowledge of the nearness of other human beings. The high-rise is a crowd. A crowd has the potential to be a community -- is a community desirable? There could be opportunities in the high-rise to create varied opportunities of community.
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(----INSERT #2: Architecture of the high-rise
Function and beauty:
We are no longer tied to structure - to build high is not a structural concern - engineering gymnastics have been done in many examples, e.g. the CCTV. Anything is possible if it be pure structural limit. We do not need to, rather, this is not the age to be like the Gothic masons who discovered and evolved very beautifully the flying buttresses. That is not the spirit of architecture of this age. The spirit of architecture of this age is not about structure -- the structural feats accomplished in buildings, though great, are of the spirit of engineering. The economic facet, the cost of the structure, is a concern. In this sense we are limited by structure.
Regarding truth, honesty, authenticity in the old debate: To be authentic for the sake of authenticity is not authentic, it is pretentiousness. Yet one cannot deny that purely structural buildings are beautiful, for instance, bridges. The need for insulation and weatherproofing in inhabited buildings render it impossible to make an honest authentic building in this sense. Perhaps in a tropical region it could be possible - here again Singapore is an open ended question.
Here, again, the issue of the spirit of "ornament". Ornament for the sake of ornament - that is out of the question. But in wanting to make a building attractive, be it with cladding, with form, with massing - is that not the spirit of ornament? What is not ornament is the part unconcerned with visuals. Here, I think about the human body. If earrings and necklaces are the old style ornaments, and clothing the new ornament in terms of cladding, am I considering then the body shape itself as ornament? The spirit in the body (indeed, the ghost in the shell) is the one important thing, this much one has to come to understand to hold anything more solid than dust and ashes in this life - yet, how could this spirit in architecture be expressed, and would not the material reflect the invisible?
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(----INSERT #3: Ornament
I look at the picture of Amiens Cathedral and such are my thoughts:
Beautiful - why beautiful? Ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Impressive - why impressive? Scale, size, ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Imaginative - why imaginative? Detail, filigree, scale, size
This last point brings me to the landscape of the film Blade Runner. Why imaginative? So many spaces for so many lives (yes, even android lives) to interact, to touch each other, to speak to God. I thought, such is the characteristics of the filigree.
Filigree: it occurred to me that as we zoom in closer and closer into a city-scape such as Manhattan, the interesting-ness is carried by the detail, and these details (the windows, the doors, the dividing lines) are something like filigree. Filigree-like. Layers and layers of filigree - a filigree of possible spaces. Even in Blade Runner, the neon lights draw a landscape of filigree in the rain and the dark mist. Such is the difference between a real city and a model of a city made out of wooden blocks - from a certain distance the wooden blocks city is interesting, but zooming in they tell nothing more - it is a dead thing. This thesis student thinks: the meaning is in life. “You cannot clothe the petty things of life in majesty” - perhaps not (and that is why high-rises are not seen as “majestic”, no matter how tall and imposing - because majesty is of the spirit, and the majestic spirit cannot exist in today’s commercial climate), but we can clothe them with imagination - the spirit of imagination can live anywhere, unlike the spirit of majesty it is not loathe to clothe the petty things of life.
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