To what extent may the physical construction of the world we inhabit constrain our actions, similar to law?
It is often said that architecture gives form to life. This occurs both by crystallizing our values in form, and also in the canalization of our activity. For an example of the first you need reach no further than any monumental architecture, be it the temples of ancient Rome or the courthouses and parliaments of the 19th and 20th centuries. The second way in which architecture controls is more subtle. For an example, think about the difference between a 19th century compartmentalized house and a late 20th century ‘open-plan’ house: the Victorian house is far more prescriptive in how it is used – it controls your use of the house by literally guiding your body through it.
In Lawrence Lessig’s book, Code (1999), in which he attempts to demonstrate how the construction of the Internet subtly, and sometimes not-so-subtly, controls our use of it, he references architecture’s operational affinity to law parenthetically as a sort of proof by analogy. He offers several examples. Robert Moses’ bridges to Long Island were intentionally built too short to allow buses (and thus ‘undesirables’) through. Speed bumps demand (more or less effectively) a certain type of behaviour from people, thus enforcing the will of the ‘designer’. Locked doors, of course, are an obvious and simple example of controlling access, as are guard rails, etc. These are all examples of architecture operating as a sort of law – exacting a certain behaviour from people through the design of the physical environment.
Examples like the speed bumps and the bridges are of course only architecture in an expanded sense of the word, but can we not imagine similarly a floor surface designed to make people walk slower (of foam maybe?), or a door that was very small and thus only allowed a certain dimension of person through! We could also imagine a chair that only fit a certain size of hip. If you were not the right shape, you would be “architecturally” prevented from sitting in the chair. Although this sounds fanciful, it happens on a regular basis. Chairs are always designed for a specific range of the population. Think of seats at the cinema– they’re all the same size, but we aren’t. A very short person can’t see over the seat in front of them – a very large person won’t fit between the arm-rests. Benches are great largely because of their flexibility – you can sit, or sprawl, or lie down. One person could use a bench, or several – and it doesn’t matter the size of your rear end. But many public benches now have small ‘nubbins’ on them that are there specifically to prevent you from lying down. The design of these benches is at the service of the authorities, operating as a form of law.
But there is another example of chairs operating in this way which is less obvious: think of Corb’s ergonomically-designed seat in the bathroom of Villa Savoye. In that this seat is specifically designed to match a person’s body, in its very ‘humanistic’ customization, it is actually exclusionary! This observation, that customization has the capacity to be exclusionary, opens up a very interesting question. Could humanism in architecture, and I’m thinking specifically here of the ‘phenomenological’ approach propagated by Holl and Pallasmaa amongst others, not actually be dangerous in its very specificity? The double-edged blade of phenomenology is that it by necessity is highly personal, and thus has the danger of being both narcissistic and exclusionary. The power of the search for the ‘things-in-themselves’ lies in its situation in experience, but that experience is always personal. This sort of design has the capacity to be exclusionary in the same way in which the philosopher Albrecht Wellmer has spoken about the impulse towards ‘regional’ styles in architecture. This sort of neo-conservative thinking about territory, he has pointed out, while strengthening inclusion and ‘grounding’, simultaneously excludes. In the same way that Moses’ bridges prevented certain people from getting to Long Island, does regionally-styled architecture not exclude those who, by virtue of geographical origin, don’t ‘get it’?
Security cameras too are a form of architecture acting as law, and not because of their actual use to record things. Security cameras in reality serve primarily a symbolic function, as everyone knows: reminding would-be offenders of the powers that be. They are almost a form of ornamentation, iconographically representing the power of the nation state (or corporation) just as statues of angels and demons used to remind us of the powers of good and evil.
Which of course brings us to Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian philosopher, and his famous excursion into architecture. The genius and effectiveness of Bentham’s single (as far as I know) architectural foray, the Panopticon, continues to strike terror into the hearts of theoreticians of architecture to this day. It symbolizes the power of architecture, in the service of authority (as it always is, don’t forget), to reduce people through fear, to humiliate and tame them through exposure.
plan of panopticon by J. Bentham, from wikimedia commons
Architects like to speak rhapsodically (and hubritically) of their power to influence people through architecture. There is an enduring belief in the field that architecture can change the world, the lurking spectre of a modernist idealism that is not yet spent. Architecture can indeed, as Lessig points out, operate as a sort of law. And in the same way that it disables a fat person from using a narrow door, it can enable a person who has lost the use of their legs to enter and explore a museum. Ramps and elevators help people with disabilities get around buildings. Railings prevent people from falling off of balconies. Small bumps on walls allow people without the use of their vision to locate certain rooms. But there is a darker side to all of this as well. Regionalistic architecture includes those that belong, but potentially excludes outsiders. Gothic churches both inspired hope and struck fear into the hearts of the faithful. Humanistic architecture implies a definition of humanity. Ornamental security cameras both reassure people and reinforce the power of an abstract and dis-embodied authority.
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