The technological “image of modernity”
Contrary to the habits of much of modernist design and planning, physical and psychological needs have to be understood not in terms of abstracted quantities, but in terms of a capacity for local, adaptive responses to needs and desires. Living individuals experience them as part of particular living communities. The alternative process proposed here can be applied generally to arrive at non-standardized and living design solutions — living because they are connected, locally rooted, and inhabited with the spirit as well as the body.
It is very easy to recognize the difference between organic and industrial morphologies, based on their perceived complexity. Here are three criteria that anyone can use:
(a) Is the geometry on all scales, from the size of the entire project down to the size of 2 mm details, complex (unique, varied), or simplistic (empty, repetitive)?
(b) Are there generally regular transitions from larger to smaller scales, with no abrupt gaps? Or, if there are abrupt transitions, are they terminated with even more complex geometries at the next scale?
(c) If the geometry is visually complex, does the form grow out of and adapt to human physical and psychological needs, or is it an arbitrary imposed “high design” complexity?
These three criteria distinguish living urban fabric from dead industrial forms (the third criterion is more difficult to apply without some experience).
Paradoxically, the segment of society (i.e., progressive intellectuals and activists promoting social causes) most interested in helping poor people is also that which, for political and ideological reasons, naively assumes that the solutions must conform to the technological “image of modernity”. They cannot think outside the seductive images of the 20th century military/industrial paradigm. They sincerely believe the promises of liberation made by modernist ideologues, but fail to see that such forms and geometries are basically inhuman. By contrast, those privileged individuals who can afford to create a warm, responsive living environment (and know how to implement it) do so mainly for themselves, remaining in general unconcerned with the plight of the poor.
People’s Unreal Image of a Desirable Home
There is another point that we have yet to discuss, and which can sabotage the best intentions of humane social housing. That is the image a potential resident has of “the most wonderful home in the world”. People carry within themselves images of desirability, often the opposite of what they truly require.
Advertising works by convincing people to consume what they don’t need; to spend their money on frivolous or noxious things instead of healthy food, medicine, and education. In the same way, our culture propagates artificial images of “beautiful” houses in the minds of the urban poor and even the most isolated rural farmers. When an individual migrates to a town, he/she will work to achieve the housing that corresponds to the image in his/her dreams. It is certainly the case that this image will clash with adaptive housing typologies.
As architects and urbanists, we are constantly competing in a universe of images and ideas that are validated by iconic properties rather than any contribution to adaptive living environments (Alexander, 2001-2005; Salingaros, 2006). Human perception of built space is governed by unstated values and subtleties. It is a frustrating battle, because people are distracted from consideration of what is good or healthy. Wonderfully adaptive vernacular architecture is identified with a heritage from which poor people are trying to escape. They are fleeing their past with its misery. People originally from the countryside shun traditional rural building typologies: they are abandoning symbols of the countryside with all its restrictions and fleeing to the “liberating” city. A new house in that style would trigger a deep disappointment. Providing humane housing therefore conflicts with maintaining the “image of modernity”.
A peasant who moves from the countryside into a favela, or someone born there will not wish to see it repaired: he/she desperately wants to move out as soon as possible to a middle-class apartment. The favela doesn’t represent the widely accepted “image of modernity”, but instead carries a social stigma. Escaping poverty, in the mind of the favela’s resident, means escaping from the favela’s geometry. That idea is reinforced by the drastic transformation in geometry that one sees in houses for the middle class. Middle class residences tend to be either dreary modernist apartment complexes, or isolated pseudo-traditional houses with a lawn and fence. Those insipid images of modernity dominate the thinking of poor people, who ingest them from television programs and other marketing outlets.
A new project of social housing that is successful in our terms will inevitably resemble traditional local urban and architectural typologies, simply because those have evolved to be the most adaptive to human needs. That resemblance, however, condemns its image as not progressive. Many residents expect to see their new houses built in the “image of modernity”, as defined by the homes of the rich and famous the world over.
Houses and offices in a high-tech modernist style are constantly shown on films and television together with their rich residents. The poor aspire to this dream. On the other hand, wealthy aristocrats living and working in colonial mansions are no longer embraced as models to emulate, because of their association with the pre-modernist past and a conservative political order. That is a pity, because 19th Century building typologies often contain much of a country’s architectural heritage, and offer adaptive solutions that have nothing to do with any social or political class. (People forget that the technocratic style now represents global economic dominance by a powerful elite).
Taking people’s aspirations seriously
As noted previously, we believe the problem is inescapably cultural in nature. It seems to us that the crux of the issue is valuation — how the community values its options, and then makes decisions accordingly. Or, more properly, it is a question of whether a truly intelligent (i.e. self-correcting and learning) system of collective decision making is in place. So our task is not just to offer choices, but also to offer a framework (or choice of frameworks) in which to make those choices over time.
If residents choose “wealth” as defined in reduced simple terms by monetary markets, then they will logically conclude that the optimal course is to scrape the site flat and put up a single high-rise building with a Big-Box-Mart next door. If they have a longer-term definition of “value” — which includes more subtle but no less vital notions of “quality of life” — then they have a basis for assessing and modifying their built environment in a way that is more complex, more inter-related, and more “organic”. This of course is what a traditional culture is and does, by definition.
That simple notion of “wealth” in reduced monetary market terms cannot distinguish between the subtle processes of life. For this reason, it cannot combine the “top-down” resources like bringing “wet appliances” (concrete boxes containing a bathroom and a kitchen counter with sink), or trucks full of building materials appearing at the edge of the site, with “bottom-up” resources like people working on their own houses, small-scale local economies, or following adaptable generative codes.
Combining top-down and bottom-up methods is the crux of the problem, which will require a complex integrative approach, rather than a linear application of resources and single-variable solutions. It is a complex, multi-variable problem of self-organization and of organized complexity, and requires a different set of tools from those people are used to working with.
How then do we take seriously people’s aspirations, without necessarily enabling what may be a manipulated desire of theirs, one that encourages the trading away of irreplaceable long-term value for perishable short-term gain? As we have seen, in a modern economic context, traditional cultures are unfortunately very vulnerable to this kind of bad-deal tradeoff. As professional advisers we have a duty to take their aspirations seriously, but also to take seriously their long-term needs, even if they are not really considering them. We should not act in their place — that would be arrogant — but instead have a kind of conversation with them, where we as professionals point out the options before them in a more complete and more connected kind of way.
What is obvious to us isn’t necessarily considered positively by the broader population. Such a thing would make sense, and avoids the dangers, if it came out of a collaborative process that was very much in the hands of the locals. It needs to be their vernacular tradition. Otherwise, there is a real danger of such an effort coming across as presumptuous and condescending. There is a very delicate balance in there between respect for the local culture that is very much a culture of poverty — the everyday urbanism, in a sense — and a recognition of the aspirations even within that culture (and in the individuals) for something they imagine to be better.
Often people need to learn to appreciate what they already have (i.e., the capacities, the wealth, and beauty of their particular cultural adaptations to circumstances). This is all the more urgent since we have a global culture that is mostly dedicated to giving people a hunger for goods they don’t have. For example, we are well aware of the tendencies for low-income communities to be big backers of Big-Box-Marts. If we try to expose all the serious problems created by Big-Box-Marts as a result of the building form and the business model, people may well accuse us of racism: “So why don’t you want us to have what the rest of you already have?”.
It’s a very delicate thing when one is working with people in poverty — how does one both give respect where respect is due, and yet recognize where things could be better without being insulting? It requires a process that will engage the creative energy and the self-reliance of the local culture.