En oppsiktsvekkende erklæring om arkitektonisk uavhengighet vil bli lansert på konferansen Beauty & Ugliness in Architecture i Oslo 2.- 4. mai. Erklæringen lanseres av den amerikanske organisasjonen Classic Planning Institute (CPI) i samarbeid med Sivilisasjonen.
Initiativet kommer fra dr. Nir Buras, direktør og grunnlegger av Classic Planning Institute, og erklæringen er et kraftig oppgjør med det han og andre mener er en reaksjonær og skadelig utvikling innen samtidsarkitekturen.
Erklæringen, som er utarbeidet i samarbeid med flere av verdens ledende klassiske arkitekter, byplanleggere, arkitekturhistorikere og samfunnsaktivister, hevder at modernistisk arkitektur er klimafiendtlig, visker ut mangfoldig og lokal kunnskap, skaper utrygge steder for sårbare grupper og bidrar til en psykisk helsekrise blant unge.
– Det store flertallet av modernistisk praksis har mislykkes i å tjene allmennhetens beste, sier Buras.
Lanseringen av erklæringen forventes å skape debatt og utfordre etablerte sannheter innen arkitektur og byplanlegging. Konferansen Beauty & Ugliness in Architecture samler eksperter og interesserte fra hele verden og har mål om å være en viktig arena for å diskutere fremtidens arkitektur.
Dr. Buras forteller at representanter fra Classical Planning Institute skal samle interesserte bidragsytere til å kunne drøfte hvordan erklæringen kan videreutvikles og benyttes. Det gjenstår å se hvilken innflytelse erklæringen vil få, men den markerer et tydelig signal om misnøye med dagens arkitektoniske retning.
Nedenfor følger en publisering av den opprinnelige erklæringen, som bærer navnet A Unanimous Declaration of Architectural Independence. Erklæringen publiseres på originalspråket, engelsk, da den til tross for å bli lansert i Norge, er ment for et internasjonalt publikum.
A Unanimous Declaration of Architectural Independence
Contemporary Architecture Is Reactionary and Climate Denying, it Erases Diverse and Indigenous Knowledge, Creates Unsafe Places for Vulnerable Group, and Fosters A Mental Health Crisis Among Youths.
The vast majority of Modernist practice has failed to serve the General Good. In the name of so-called “functionalism,” “machine aesthetics,” “progress,” and “architecture of our time” it has failed to steward the Education, Training, Practice, and Construction of the Built Environment. As if a mad Machine, this Practice has repeatedly applied its same failed Solutions with ever greater Ferocity;
The Modernist Establishment have been deaf to the voice of Reason and of Professional Collegiality, forcing us to denounce their Capacity to rightly serve Individuals, Communities, and the Planet itself. While we hold no Argument with any specific architectural style, we reject the intolerant Domination by the Practitioners of one that has resulted in more harm than good.
We Promote Architecture That Is Progressive, Climate Friendly, that Supports Community Health, Celebrates Diverse and Indigenous Cultures, and which Creates Safe Environments for All; That is based on the self-evident unity of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in the built environment.
PREAMBLE
Experience has shown that humankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right them by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
So, when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a Collegial Group of people to dissolve the Academic and Professional bonds which have connected them with others, and to assume a Separate and Equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to separate.
We hold the unity of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness to be self-evident in regard to the built environment:
that all things built, constructed, and planted must reflect certain unalienable well-building Qualities, that among these are Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas; Firmness, Commodity and Delight; Durability, Adaptive Reuse, and Beauty;
that to secure these qualities in such things, Colleges of like-minded individuals are instituted among Practitioners, Teachers, Students, and Dilettanti, deriving their just powers from their shared interests;
that whenever any such College becomes destructive in its individual, societal, and planetary Contexts, it is the Right of the Members to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a New College, laying its Foundation on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect the Safety and Happiness of Individual, Society, and Planet.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Colleges long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
So, when a long Train of Abuses and Malpractice, pursuing invariably the same narrow Objectives of “architecture of its time,” so-called “functionalism,” and the idolization of “starchitect” genius, all hiding behind “social good,” in fact evinces an intention to make Practitioners, Academics and Students conform in a single absolute System, it is their Right, it is their Duty,
to throw off such professional and academic Yokes;
to provide new Guards for the security of their Future Practice, Enjoyment, and Study;
to ensure the freedom of their Clients and the Communities they serve to obtain Products as beautiful as they wish;
to serve the Communities within which they operate by designing genuinely Durable Buildings and Places;
to engage in training and education new generations of practitioners
and to persuade the Governments within which they practice to enforce Locally Appropriate Practices that recognize the established disciplines of traditional architecture and urbanism and their Supporting Disciplines.
Such has been the patient sufferance of the World’s Traditional Architects, Planners, and Urbanists; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Allegiance to the established Forms of Practice and Study.
HARM TO THE PROFESSION
Accumulating scientific Evidence overwhelmingly supports traditional Approaches as being the most economical and efficacious Short, Medium, and Long Term; that they contain proven and tried Principles and Applications that have been and can be adapted and used for increased Health, Well-Being, Performance, Enjoyment, for the benefit of Individuals, Communities, and the Planet itself.
In contrast, the History of the present Modernist Design Establishment is one of Repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in Direct Object the Establishment of a Tyranny of Absolute Artistic, Ideological, and Practice Conformance over its Constituents, despite the ills rendered by this to Individuals, Communities, and the Planet itself. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a Candid World. Indeed, the Malpractices of Modernism in Architecture include that,
it claims a spurious Special Knowledge and an Absolute Morality isolating Communities from their Place, Users from each other, and its Members from the World; creating and employing its own Obfuscatory, self-Referential Concepts and Vocabulary, incomprehensible to Outsiders;
it abuses Humanity by cyclically forcing on Humankind perverse, dogmatic Tabula Rasas; unintelligent, inhumane Dystopian Experiments, removed from Reason, Beauty, Nature, and Common Sense;
it demands the strictest of Obedience to its Dogmas which are intent on replacing the Classical Method by means of Intellectual and Physical Bullying,
it uses Coercion to achieve its Dominance and lobbies to legislate its monopolistic position, oppressing and marginalizing all those who dissent from its Precepts or Question its Intellectual Tyranny;
it mocks the Common People critiquing it as ignorant while they are only naïve of the former’s Intolerant Ideology, the Charters of which categorically reject Traditional Practice as Evil and Wrong;
it has created a horrendous Academic and studio culture, indoctrinating Students with False Histories, keeping them in ignorance of Millennia of Real Architecture, while bullying them into conformance with Modernist aesthetics if they wish to graduate, ensuring that the students are neither architecturally literate nor construction-savvy, and forbidding them to study anything that does not conform to the Dogma;
The repeated Harms it has brought to the Professions include that,
its employment of impenetrable Jargon and Word-Play in its Attempts to appear Profound has put the Architectural Profession into Disrepute to an increasingly bemused Public;
it has fiercely prevented information embodied in traditional design and verified by the latest scientific discoveries from entering architecture schools and construction practice
in its attempts to appear “Scientific” while deliberately rejecting any Semblance of a True Scientific Model it has made the profession a Laughing-Stock;
its educational system and academic accreditation boards have done a great disservice to several generations of practice by indoctrinating students and professionals in unnatural methods of design and construction that do not favor the human body or spirit; which are wholly unsustainable; and which have wrought nearly half the global warming that we suffer today.
it has allowed the corporate adoption of sub-optimal computerized programs and the adoption by the construction industry of practices deleterious to human, societal, and planetary well-being, increasing the liability for global warming of such parties through such malpractices.
it has consistently reduced standards of Engineering and Construction Practices which have caused society to exponentially increase codes and bureaucracy in self-preservation, while building increasingly inadequate Structures
it has removed the necessary tools of Construction from the Hands of Building Arts Masters, abandoning Conscientious Design to Computerized Programs and Human-Sustaining Skills to Industrialized Assembly, benefitting only the personal gain of factory owners.
it promotes the Incomprehensible and the outrageous as a Matter of Course, lest the Public should regard its Services as Redundant; and
it consistently rewards Failure by giving Prizes and Medals to those responsible for Creating Architectural and Environmental Disasters
Perhaps worst of all, the Modernist Establishment has shed most of the Responsibilities formerly part of the Architect’s Expertise, thereby severely weakening the Power and Influence of the Profession; it has legislated the the Term Architect in the Academic, Licensing, and Construction Realms to refer exclusively to the Practice of Modernist Styles, while at the same time abandoning the Term to banal and abusive Usage by other Disciplines wishing to gain Credibility by the use of the Term such as “Financial Architect,” “Computer Architect,” etc., depriving it of any real Meaning and thereby demeaning the Practice as a whole.
PROFESSIONAL INDEPENDENCE
In every stage of these Malpractices our Petitions for Redress in the last one Hundred Years, in even the most Humble Terms, were Unilaterally Rejected, in a manner which marked every Act as Cultish, Tyrannical Group-Think, unfit for Adoption by Free-Thinking Individuals.
Nor have We been wanting in Attentions to our Modernist Architectural Establishment Brethren.
• We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Institutions and Lobbies to extend an Unwarrantable Jurisdiction over Traditional Practice.
• We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Practices regarding Beauty, Durability, Human Well-Being, and Societal and Economic Values of Healing Fabric.
• We have appealed to their Native Good Sense to not Discredit and Diminish Practices that have been Proven to Best Serve Humanity
• We have conjured them by the Ties of our Common Kindred to Disavow Disruptive and Slanderous Practices for their Self-Promotion or to hide their Ignorance of Millennial Wisdom.
The Modernist Establishment have been deaf to the voice of Reason and of Professional Consanguinity, forcing us to denounce their Capacity to rightly serve Individuals, Communities, and the Planet itself. While we hold no Argument with any specific architectural style, we reject the intolerant Domination by one that has done more harm than good.
Ultimately, the vast majority of Modernist practice has failed to best serve Individuals, Society, and the Planet. For reasons of unconscionable Aesthetic Ideology, it has failed to steward the Education, Training, Practice, and Construction of the Built Environment. As if a rogue Robot, its Obvious Failures encourage it to repeatedly apply its same Destructive Solutions with ever greater Ferociousness;
Therefore of necessity, following nearly a century of Modernist Hegemony which has caused Urban Alienation, severe Stress and Disease, the Destruction of Resources, and over 40% of Global Warming, we, the Traditional and Classical Architects and Urbanists of the World, Assembled in General Congress and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good Members of our College, solemnly publish and declare,
That this NEW COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE is and, of Right, ought to be Free and Independent from the Modernist Establishment as present Constituted; and that as Free and Independent Practitioners, Academics, and Students, we have full Power to create Guilds, establish Proper Codes of Practice, to teach Architecture, grant Qualifications, to build Buildings and Fabric to Correct and Proper Standards, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent Colleges may of Right Do.
Thus, for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each on our sacred Honor our commitments to best serve the People, the Communities, and the Planet itself according to the Principles emanating from the Unity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty which underpin authentic and genuine Architecture for Humanity.
