The international style: theme and variations 1925-65

 

Modern architecture is and must be squarely based on the social achievements of modern science, technology, and engineering. Why then does it so often tend to become something inhuman? I believe that one of the main reasons is that it is not always created merely to satisfy human requirements, but rather for some other reasons, such as the profit motive. Or attempt is made to cramp the architecture into the frame work of some budget formulated by the mechanical operations of a powerful bureaucratic system of the modern state, this budget having nothing to do with human considerations. Another possibility is that inhuman elements may be contained within science, technology, and engineering themselves. When man attempts to undestand a certain phenomenon, science analyses it, breaking it down into the simplest possible elements. Thus, in structural engineering when one attempts to understand a certain phenomenon, the methods adopted are those of simplification and abstraction. The question arises of wether the use of such methods way not cause a departure from human realities... Modern architecture from human realities... Modern architecture must recall its rudiments, its initial principles as a human architecture. Whereas science and engineering are the products of human brains, the modern architecture and the modern cities wich are built by them tend to become inhumam. That which has beclouded the rudimentary principles of modern architecture, that which is distorting its sense of mission is today's ethical system regulating human action, and the system of value judgments concealed behind this ethical system. These ethical and value criteria are the forces which are moving modern civilization but are also obliterating human dignity and making a mockery of the Declaration of Human Rights. The conclusion of the tragedy is by no means simple. We must go back to the beginnings of Western civilization and discover whether the power to bring about such an ethical revolution can really be found in the inventory of Western civilization itself. If not, then we must seek it, together with Toynbee, in the Orient, or perhaps in Japan.