“Beauty is sin deep” – Saki 1
Coleridge defined beauty as 'unity in variety'
Many places that are considered 'beautiful' contain horrible histories, grim realities that funded their construction or saved them from destruction. Venice 'trafficked in slaves, ignored her poor, dissipated her resources and exacted immoderate revenge on her enemies3. But does this, all these centuries later, detract from 'her' beauty? Venice is a place generally recognized as beautiful, romantic - a favorite place to visit for honeymooners and those on a romantic weekend and 'It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness'4 and yet 'we are merely the resultant of previous generations, we are also the resultant of their errors, passions, and crimes; it is impossible to shake off this chain'5. This monument to wealth and power that we perceive as 'beautiful' is built on the misery of others: 'the revived restrictions on the slave trade... aroused a great deal of discontent among the Venetians' who became involved in 'wars against the Croats, the Slavs, The Holy Land, The Greeks, The Hungarians, Belgrade, Rhodes, suppressing any would be power that might adversely affect its trading routes' 6. The history that is the foundation to all that visual beauty becomes lost in some sort of collective amnesia, it sinks into the marshy waters and we are suitably impressed by all the facades that were built to impress. There is a disassociation with the place, the way it looks, and the history that created the wealth that funded the buildings we call beautiful – why?
The past that produced the historic built environment is presented as a 'Golden Age', whatever the era and before WWI and WWII, the cities of Europe were filled with grand historic buildings that became casualties in the fighting. Even before those events one of the main jewels in historic Europe was Prague. Sometimes called 'the city of silence', there is a history in Prague that is rarely mentioned: As a tourist in Prague I admired Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square), the Astronomical clock and the delightful buildings that weave towards the statues of the Charles Bridge, across the river and up to Prague Castle. I read Kafka and about Kafka, and about the atrocities by the Russian Communists that ended with 'The Velvet Revolution'. Eventually, after drinking coffee outside a street café, I climbed a magnificent modern spiral stair* looking for a toilet. Outside the toilet was a sign – 'These toilets are for the use of those visiting the Art Gallery ONLY. Being a respectful person, I visited the Art Gallery. I walked around the gallery, not intending to spend much time there, then a beautiful painting of a girl beside a river caught my eye. I liked the colours and the way the painting seemed to be suffused with the joys of Spring. I read the label stuck on the wall..... 'died Bergen Belsen. I was shocked. The pretty joy of the canvas was as removed from the death camps as was possible. I looked at the next canvas, same thing: 'died Bergen Belsen'. Every sign in the gallery said the same thing. I went to speak to the girl on the desk and she enlightened me: “To save the city from harm, the city Governors (Sudeten Party) traded the people to the Nazis”. When I went outside the buildings did not seem so beautiful. They seemed almost creepy, a stage set behind which piled up the bodies of the death camps. Here lies a philosophical dilemma: was it right to trade thousands of lives to preserve a city for future generations on the basis that it is considered 'beautiful'? If you think the answer to that is “yes”, then would it still be “yes” if it were your family, your Grandmother, your mother, your daughter? Does it make any difference if the target group is a religious group, 'intellectuals', 'deviant artists', political beliefs or because of the colour of your skin – all of who were targeted and ended up in the death camps? Can the city still be considered 'beautiful' when we become aware of the horror of it's history, of the thinking that allows it to exist? Surely, a good building graces it's environment, not disgraces it and why it is still standing there is surely as important as how 'attractive' it might be deemed to look within the street scene.
Mengo, capital of Buganda prior to the effects of slavery
Similar stories of grand historic buildings standing on human misery are everywhere, from the slave plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas, to the 'elegant' streets of European ports where merchants and 'ordinary' people benefited from the slave trade7. Can such places be ethically conserved if they are separated from their social history? My personal experience8 is that such buildings are appreciated separated from their social history, which is actively suppressed. It seems that the buildings of the past are held up as an example9, but that example is sometimes a selective construct and we should ask the question 'why are some parts of the history are edited out'.
The history behind the facades of historic buildings as a record of atrocities extends beyond WWII, the slave trade and far back into history. 'Languedoc (France) is now a peaceful land, but during the 13th Century it was the site of one of the most vicious episodes in medieval history. It was invaded and there was a bitter battle for the soul of the people of the region, a battle in which beauty was used as a political weapon'10. This story focuses on The Cathars, a pacifist, religious sect inspired by the mysticism and non-materialism of Christ's teaching. 'It now seems extraordinary that one of the most fanatical and bloodthirsty crusades undertaken by Roman Catholic Christians in the Middle Ages was... against' its own people, 'a people that venerated Christ' and 'the crusaders were just as bloodthirsty in Languedoc as they had been in The Holy Land'10.
Albi cathedral is at the center of this story and it is like no other cathedral in Europe. 'Built using treasure seized from persecuted families' the new regime sponsored by the Catholic Church of Rome extorted or confiscated money and property from the local people and 'property continued to be confiscated for the completion of the cathedral – which took over 100 years' 10. For the local people at the time the cathedral was being built, it must have seemed like 'an emblem of evil' and yet we might look at the buildings across the river Tarn on a spring day and think “how beautiful”. Is it beautiful? when we preserve such monuments, what are we actually preserving? When we visit the Vatican museum and see the wealth of objects displayed, do we consider where they come from? When we understand their history, soaked in blood and persecution, are they still beautiful, and if the answer to that is “yes”, then what does that say about our ideas of beauty and the power of aesthetics on moral perception?
Buildings of the past have a history, the impressive monuments to wealth and power that form the streets of Europe's big cities are often the product of something we would rather forget. To articulate the past does not mean to recognize it 'the way it really was' as 'the past can only be seized as an image'11 - our entire sensibility is locked into the time we occupy, with its own historical influences, concerns, tastes and fashions. We experience the past separated from its context, distanced from its embedded tradition : 'a statue of Venus stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol'11. Outside of this context there is sometimes a conscious act to reverse history, particularly with damage done by the different sides in the Second World War.
Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland 1945
Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland 1970
From the reconstruction of Ypres (Belgium) or Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland, to the rebuilding of Riga or Dresden, sometimes the act of 'Conservation' actively seeks to erase the past and restore things to how they were before the tragic event that led to their destruction: This is 'Conservation' of the built environment as active historical revisionism. 'We did not want a new city... we wanted the Warsaw of our day and that of the future to continue the ancient tradition'12 explained the conservation chief of Warsaw's medieval city centre when it was proposed that it be restored so that it looked exactly as it did before the Nazi destruction. The rebuilding of a 'replica' of what had been is not an 'ancient tradition', traditionally after events, such as the destruction of Chicago or the Fire of London, people tried to use the situation as an opportunity to improve on what had been. The rebuilding of an exact replica of a place prior to a destructive act – particularly an occupation or act of war, is therefore 'Cconservation' as an act of political defiance that seeks to write the event out of history.
An example of two, almost opposite, approaches in the rebuilding after an act of war would be to compare Coventry, England, with Dresden, Germany. Coventry was one of the first cities to be 'carpet bombed' by the Nazi aggressors, and they saw it as so 'successful' an act of destruction that they reportedly referred to later cities that they 'carpet bombed' as 'having been Coventried'13. With the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral, Basil Spence did not seek to rebuild the destroyed Gothic Cathedral or even to build in a 'historical style', but rather to keep the ruin of the destroyed cathedral as a record of the destruction and interconnect that space with the new building. The space within the ruins of the Gothic Cathedral becomes an event space, an open air chapel that seems to stretch back in history to the dawn of religion. As the buildings interconnect this almost becomes the entrance courtyard to the new building. The cross on the alter of the new building is formed of building elements fused together during the firestorm in the destruction of the original, and this seeks to connect the present to the past in the central focus of the new building; reinforcing history and the sense of place that the building inhabits. This is a modern building that speaks of history and is 'rich in invention' and has a 'real feeling of symbolism' 14.
There is symbolism in Dresden too, the Frauenkirche may be a recreation of what was destroyed, however, 'over 2,000 original fragments were re-used in this reconstruction'15 creating a patchwork of dark original stones among the modern stonework. Therefore, the building seeks to appear as if the event never occurred and at the same time reminds us that it did. Is what we are looking at 'reconstruction', or is it more? 'Memory is a deep and complex phenomenon. It requires internalization and intensification; it means the interpenetration of all the elements of the past'16. This is important as it stops the building from being a mere replica, as the history of the building is embedded in its fabric for all to see. It seems to describe more than recollection as a reversal of an event, 'It is not simply a repetition but rather a rebirth of the past; it implies a creative and constructive process' 17. The inclusion of the burnt stones at Dresden show a past that has been re-collected and organized and assembled into a focus of thought.
The Frauenkirche, Dresden, Germany – reconstruction with reclaimed stones
Is either approach to the rebuilding after the destruction 'better' than the other? If the quality of a modern building cannot be guaranteed, is the 'recreation' approach the safest approach for a city trying to recover? 'Since antiquity, beauty has been regarded as possessing a privileged relation to the truth'18 and Alain de Botton makes the point that 'bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design'19. If that statement is true, should we be worried? As Katherine Shonfield noted, the 'future ultimately rests on ideas we have about it'20. So what does the increasing power of the conservation movement say about our views of the future? Nietzsche argued in 'The Use and Abuse of History' that 'the past mobilized against ideas of the present robs us of our future'<1. But does it, or does it just create a different future? Is the 'recreation' of Dresden not a modern construct, a product of our time, a modern political act that seeks to validate itself through the promotion of the illusion of continuity with the past? If this is true, does it matter? Are not people, wherever they are, just seeking to create the environments that they wish to inhabit? With this in mind, it might be interesting to think on what the rebuilding of Iraq might look like and whether anyone other than the Iraqi people could do it successfully? Speed, security and lack of finance will probably create an environment that no one would want to live in, but if these were not issues, what would be produced and how would it reflect the Iraqi people's attitude towards recent events? How would it be perceived if the Iraqi people chose to restore Baghdad so that it appeared exactly as it had done before the fall of Saddam?
Research undertaken by CABE in 2008 found that for most people 'beauty was important' and if from antiquity the idea of beauty is linked to truth,'from this follows that an ugly object is a negation not just of beauty, but of truth. Ugliness belongs to whatever negates the truth. It belongs to a series of categories which similarly distort the truth of things....It has negated what is real, what is a true object of thought'22. So maybe Le Corbusier was right when he said, 'a good building is an honest building'23. Although 'when Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought; beauty, he said, is unity in variety'24.
Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc
1 Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) P287 Brit Wit Susie Jones 2004 ISBN 1 84024 415 1
2 The image of Venice 'Canaletto meets the future' is by Alex King ©Alex King 1995.
3 The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton - . P135 - Ideals of home. 2007 ISBN 978-0-141-01500-2
4 The Kreutzer Sonata – Tolstoy - Dictionary of quotations 1994 Geddes & Grosset P53 ISBN 1 85534 743 1
5 'Use and Abuse of History'. Nietzsche. P21.
6 Francesco's Venice – Francesco Da Mosto - P39 -P48.
7 There are many books documenting the Slave trade both specific and as incidental to other histories: Bristol slave trade: 'Conquerors of Time' by Trevor Fishlock, 1988, Chapter 7, Page 77. also 'The scramble for Africa' by Thomas Pakenham – ISBN 0-349-10449-2 which describes the organization of traders such as Tippu Tib in the capturing of people for trade as slaves. Pakenham's book also includes an illustration of Mengo, capital of Buganda, the largest kingdom in central Africa and excerpts from missionary journals describing the structure of the society. What becomes clear from Pakenham's book is that many of the problems in Africa today are a direct result of Europeans creating countries with complete disregard for the local tribes and their land rights. The genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s was a product of this as is the continuing conflict in Nigeria.
8 'Terminology, Heritage and being 'Modern' by Alex King - read it at The Urban Times.
9 See Prince's Trust.
10 Adventure's in Architecture - 1996 – Dan Cruickshank - P26 'Beauty' ISBN 978 0 297 84444 0
10 IBID – P27.
10 IBID – P31.
11 Ranke quoted in Illuminations. Walter Benjamin. 1955. P247. ISBN 0-7126-6575-7
11 Illuminations. Walter Benjamin. 1955. P217. ISBN 0-7126-6575-7.
12 The Past is a Foreign Country – David Lowenthal. P46 quoting: Lorentz, 'Reconstruction of the old town centers of Poland' P46-47. See also: 'Protection of monuments' p 420.
13 Source: Yesterday Channel documentary – 'Secrets of World War II'.
14 Sir John Summerson, AA Files No 26. 1993 P69.
15 'Adventure's in Architecture' - 1996 – Dan Cruickshank - P132 'Beauty' ISBN 978 0 297 84444 0.
16 'Matiere et memoire'. Bergson.
17 'An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P51 1944. Yale University Press.
18 'The Ugly'. Mark Cousins. AA Files No 28. 1994. P61.
19 'The Architecture of Happiness'. Alain de Botton. 2006. P248. ISBN 978-0-141-01500-2.
20 'Purity & Tolerance'. Katherine Shonfield. AA Files 28. 1994. P34.
21 'The Use and Abuse of History'. Nietzsche – See P172-173 'The Story of Philosophy'. Bryan Magee. 2001.
22 'The Ugly'. Mark Cousins. AA Files No 28. 1994. P61.
23 Corbusier is in this statement applying an idea that permeates philosophy to building: beauty and truth are linked. From Socrates 'Dinner Party' via Plato's 'Symposium' to statements such as 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know' – Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn.
24 The Divine Proportion – a study in Mathematical beauty. H. E. Huntly P14 .1970. quoting J. Bronowski – 'Science and Human Values' (Pelican 1964) p29-30.
*The stair and gallery are located at The House of The Black Madonna, Stare Mesto, Prague1.
