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Ukrainian Journal of Ecology
UkrainianJournal of Ecology, 2018, 8(1), 266-272 doi: 10.15421/2018_211
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Post-Postmodern Urban Architecture based on Jacques Lacan's three orders
Farshad Mafakher
Faculty of Architecture and Urban planning, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University Qazvin, Iran. Email: [email protected] Submitted: 25.12.2017. Accepted: 09.02.2018
Developments in modern architecture coincided with developments in scientific and aesthetic approaches of modern time with modernity demanded in all scientific fields. Aesthetic views in modern architecture tended toward clear and simple ways of viewing, therefore it was brought to visual brevity and urban scales and details were created in buildings and urbanism. Visual brevity and its interaction with time and pace in the course of changing views at the time of evolution of modern architecture and romantic thoughts date back to nineteenth century, revealing naturalistic architecture pinnacle in architectural works. Visual brevity prioritized destination with no slightest doubt and the architect's image (the imaginary) evolved in modern architecture. On the other hand, through environmental same-concept with living organism of nature, visual brevity created organic architecture. The criticism of postmodernism, compared with modernism, considered premodernism forgotten images, discussing time and pace in modern criticism in terms of concentrated, deconcentrated or skipping human and followed deliberative time and pace to evaluate architecture and urbanism works, the inspiration of which was the architect's postmodern images. Postmodern symbolism (the symbolic) stemmed from forgotten memories. Regarding this, with a closer look, modern and postmodern developments are analyzed considering Jacques Lacan's three orders. Post-postmodern realism (the real) toward a vague non-sense world in real world is the aesthetics particular of this era. Lack of same- concept in this type of aesthetics resulted in lack of a clear specification source. Hence, continuous research is required. Key words: visual brevity; environmental same-concept; non-same concept; Lacan's orders; otherness
This study considers changes in social aesthetic views in the architecture which have impacts on the approval of opinions during post-postmodernism. With a switch to same- concept, visual brevity of modern world returns to premodernism in postmodernism and due to lack of modern aesthetic imageries, postmodernism sought this same- concept in previous course. Accordingly, post-postmodern world is always following non-same using terms, which focus on this concept. Otherness, nonexistence, never- existed, unseen, undiscovered, modernity are the evaluation criteria in the new post-postmodern era. In this paper, problems arisen in architecture and urbanism are addressed in terms of non- same concept. This study follows an analytical- descriptive method and a combination of deduction to induction and vice versa.
Hutcheson states: "for beauty, order and harmony in modern world, despite its disorganized tumultuous appearance, there can be a reasonably coherent response that the pleasure in beautiful objects is a result of unity in diversity". For us, pleasure or enjoyment has an inner aspect and "sensible" in the existence, as Hutchison noted, is the aesthetics to us. The two issues raised by him were bases of modern philosophy aesthetics (Macey, 2009). He did not find an absolute response but these two views influenced modernistic and organic thoughts (Bennetts, Radford, & Williamson, 2003).
Kant considers four aspects for analysis of the Beautiful: quality, quantity, proportion and direction. Appropriateness of the tasteful forms Kant's aesthetics theory (Irvine, 2013). He adds: "the pleasure of beauty is not dependent on any interest; rather it is a free disinterested delight because here no interest, feeling or rational affects our approval and satisfaction" (Connor, 1989). He believes in pleasure as deliberation and beauty as an enjoyable issue for individuals and formalism. The Beautiful has essential implication to happiness (Jarzombek, 1999). The Sublime is math and logic which are the assessment of rational "mind listen to the voice of reason" and dynamism in nature and extremely powerful phenomena such as rocks and mountains. Flowers are beautiful and have intrinsically enjoyable natural beauty. However, the beauty of buildings is dependent on the ultimate goal of making the structure which depends on reason and logic and it is related to ethics. Natural beauty is based on interaction of deliberation yielded from natural rules and mental power(Young, 2016). This harmony or coordination is necessary for beauty. Creation of art works comes from artistic genius that has no rule and can be a pattern for other works. Kant's creation of art was foundation of Romantic Movement. Artwork has formal intrinsic properties that are cause of its goodness. Facts are illusions which human always forgets (Lacan, 2001). He considers facts dependent on interests. Facts are
primitive metaphors and human gets peace and rise only through contraction and conclusion of these similarities and concepts. Jacques Lacan founded three orders i. e. symbolic, real and imaginary, representing three basic ideas on aesthetics. Lacan despises the imaginary. He noted that modern time represents the imaginary pinnacle of human, since he is engaged in himself and conquering the world himself or by his creations (Ghirardo, 1996), therefore, while modernity thoughts were forming, architecture extended domination through harmonious unmixed masses.
The symbolic includes all the issues known as realities. From language to law and all social structures. The symbolic includes realms where an individual is considered as part of human community. People are placed within the symbolic before they are born. They belong to particular ethnicity, country, language, family, gender and socio- economic groups. In some cases, even, they are given a name before they are born. In Lacan's point of view, Signifying Chain, or Rules in his words, sets up the symbolic. He borrowed the term from Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure who believed that language is a system of signs and each sign is formed of two parts: signifier and signified. Signifier is an image of sign form and signified is the concept related to it. Saussure also considered language as a system of relationships or differences, that is; no sign shall be interpreted or defined regardless of other signs (Ghirardo, 1996). From the imaginary, the viewpoint comes to symbolic beauty of postmodernism. The real represents the areas of life that cannot be known. Actually, the real is the world before it is fragmented by language. In other words, the real refuses symbolism; therefore, it does not enter language to be identifiable (Schmid, 2016). AIDS is a simple example. Some consider it a punishment for homosexuality and straying from Christianity, some believe it was a plan by CIA to depopulate Africa and some think it is a consequence of human intervention in nature. All the interpretations are due to the silent nature of this disease, which is indifferent to the reasons set for it. AIDS is an influx of the real and all the efforts made to give it a symbolic appearance and import it into language fail. It is tried to find a message in the real, which does not exist there, since the real is incomprehensible, meaningless, and meaning, is only found in the symbolic. In the following figure, two motions are marked in red. First, the motion with cylinder circumference as its axis and second is the motion of cylindrical circumference around central point. Demands for variable desires in symbolic world can be considered similar to first motion, however; it deflects missing demand away from moving around central point. In other words, asking for a demand refers to asking for a missing demand (Tallis, 2016).
After the dominance of Christian thinking and illustration of Gospel on the walls of religious buildings, trying to display the logging on the walls of churches and cathedrals, based on new and ancient times, social brevity- based aesthetics formed and became a very favorable context for modernity thoughts. In urbanism, with clear direction, visual brevity formed with urban signs in the city and straight streets with lands divided into squares, were simplest form of space division (Webster, 2002). Buildings, in urbanism, were valued in terms of remarkability in order to find the intended destination. This evolution in buildings in urbanism changed the dignity addressed during premodern era. High buildings were a symbol of high social rank of their owner and high-rise concept was found in architectural quality and quantity, however; during modern time, high buildings only had a high, not high- rise meaning (Lewis, Brooks-Gunn, & Jaskir, 1985). These concepts, did not find their equivalences in new architecture, however their keywords were used. High- rise construction formed in modern architecture with its reality in high buildings to create visual brevity instead of high- quality human life (Mafakher, Amrei, Panahi, & Afrooz, 2012). Glass surfaces of high facades and remarkability in different urban areas were features of visual brevity aesthetics. Buildings became shining with brief interior architectural designs. Adolf Loos's "ornament and crime" and Mies van der rohe's "less is more", formed in the approval of visual brevity aesthetics in society. Meanwhile, organic architecture created a different type of visual brevity, according to which, buildings were in harmony with surrounding environment, mountains, greeneries and trees. Therefore, organic untouched Euclidean and non-Euclidian architectures were a response to visual brevity (Evans, 2006). Le Corbusier's ideas in designing Villa Savoye as a modern architectural work, regarding brevity, resulted in reduced number of columns and modulation, creating the view of a white building in a green zone with visual brevity inside and outside the building. The reason of modern anti- contextualism was the contrast between visual brevity and context. In contrast to these questions, the pro- contextualism response by organic architecture in visual brevity was raised (Kant, 1951). Visual brevity entered construction, time and motion. Simple access to stairs and clear signs were formed in buildings. Simplicity in aesthetic dimensions and size was an evolution to achieve a modern aesthetic approach by human, influencing all aspects of his life.
Table 1. Comparison of two same- concept views
Discussion
Non-Euclidean geometry
Euclidean geometry
Nature- based
Organic
Modern Distinct Clear
Natural context-oriented mass Falling Water House
Deliberation time and pace
Transparent Simple mass Sign aspects Seagram Tower Skipping time and pace
Visual brevity promised a better and comfortable life with a lot of fun and freedom; therefore, countries of indolence culture welcomed it. Less waste of time and faster pace to fulfill life goals were main concerns of architecture and urbanism and part of urbanization culture (Karasozen, 2016). The idea of fast and less time- consuming deliberation was community- friendly, hence; visual brevity was welcomed by Iranian architecture and visual minimums when designing architectural spaces and copying with minimal changes in maps were its consequences. While simple solutions were found to human problems and issues, visual brevity was followed by new problems in all aspects of life, namely; a global trend of less- wearing by women in all countries with which a sensual beauty of visual brevity was introduced and gender- oriented feminist architecture discussed in old Greek and Roman architecture, as well, evolved. Visual brevity combined with economic evolutions and two factors i. e. time and more interest rate were considered as main economic indices to gain wealth with least effort and deliberation in computer remote business world, which demanded less time and pace and resulted in deliberation pace to be forgotten. Modern visual brevity displayed more distinction as a goal in modern world with exaggerated shining transparent distinct buildings and applied higher speed for the paths to reach the destination (construction of highways as high- speed routes) and set the origin and destination as the objectives, regardless of the direction, designing a non- deliberation ongoing time and pace (Buckler et al., 2009).
Destination Origin
= 0
Fig. 1. Modern architecture- visual brevity (the imaginary)
The new approach of visual brevity was in harmony with natural environment. The pace and time of deliberation resulted in signified path which matters in short times. Drowned in thoughts, human considered time details and deliberation pace. The pleasure of the path and romantic aspects of compliance with natural environment followed the interest and love to achieve goals.
Fig. 2. Organic architecture, visual brevity (the imaginary)
Fundamental changes occurred in family structures, for instance, men followed fathers' job in premodern society, however; in modern time, the income was important to them in order to fulfill high goals and dreams (modern architecture). Gaining money and wealth fast and over time, or in other words, visual brevity of deliberation along the path could be a living for them. The path became vague and drowned in romantic world (organic architecture) (Rudofsky, 1964).
Table 2. Modern non-deliberative time and pace, organic deliberation in terms of visual brevity (the imaginary)
Organic
Modern
With deliberation on time and pace Path is important Nostalgic streets
Drowned in details in harmony with romanticist nature Path is beautiful
Buildings have memories and deliberation time. Nostalgic streets and romantic buildings Woman is the origin of love and compassion
Body language sees the details of face, ornaments, ... Buildings are formed of clothes_
Without deliberation on time and pace Origin and destination are important high- speed freeways The aim is to arrive Arriving is beautiful
Shining glass high buildings are a sign of the path within the city for citizens Woman is a tool to achieve political and economic goals
Body language evaluates the whole body Buildings are formed of body_
The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies
The features in the table below are only often-discussed tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism. For heuristic purposes only (Rudofsky, 1964).
Table 3. The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies (Irvine, 2013)
Modernism/Modernity_
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received.
Progress accepted as driving force behind history.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything. Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity. Master narrative of progress through science and technology.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism, " unified identity.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).
Root/Depth tropes.
Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals. "
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs.
popular culture).
Imposed consensus that high or official culture
is normative and authoritative, the ground of
value and discrimination.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass
marketing.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopedia.
Postmodern/Postmodernity
Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin.
"Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative.
Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions. Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities. Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures. Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Rhizome/surface tropes.
Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations. Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience. Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture.
Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories. Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities. Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality.
Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. Paradigms: The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge and authority.
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature). Design and architecture of New York and Berlin. Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.
Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Internet file sharing, the Web and Web 2. 0.
Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge.
Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness. Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche. Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic. Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system._
Modern architecture along the time and pace, with less deliberation, ended in Picasso's Guernica known as elionet. Visual brevity changed into scientific brevity, as well. Students demanded fast learnings and they became superficial learners, since "learn fast" was the motto of the time, regardless of the reasons and basic studies, which caused past memories, symbols, culture and whatever was considered identity to be forgotten. Postmodernism was a solution to return to premodern signs and symbols. Postmodern architecture was a recovery tool of modern lost information, but it was a return to ignored symbols with an old background in a well- organized coordinated premodern architecture culture, rooted in religious and cultural beliefs and traditions, however; with the new postmodern approach, its reorganization failed to end in a solution.
Regarding this, postmodern was unable to find a definitive response, inevitably (Masood et al., 2017); following symbolism of these elements, it tried to make a relationship between the concepts. Lacan named the relationship as the symbolic which human adopted from society and culture, formed in communities' culture earlier. During assessment, postmodern provides no criteria and brings the architecture to a supermarket of all symbolizations (tritely) in order to provide people with all they require from the architecture. Post-postmodern architecture became controllable, assessing all the stages (McMullen et al., 2009). The context for this type of architecture had to be prepared earlier and, before building, using patterns, it had to be predicted if buildings were efficient or not. Architectural forms changed into main architectural concepts through a detailed architecture program. However, in some countries, results of this type of architecture found fans who failed to understand it deeply. Therefore, to understand this type of architecture, which included postmodern architecture, there was a tendency toward the real (postmodernism entered Iranian architecture in form of beautiful shapes). Unreal in Lacan's viewpoint, something never seen or existed before, is different from something with no image or reality.
The important question is that how far will modern visual brevity be reflected in the third world. In a world where beauty grows along the time and pace, without deliberation and individuals struggle to achieve their goals and less work and more money is preferred, one should go forward nonstop. The criteria for beauty have changed. A driver gets angry because the other one moved a little late and sometimes it ends in fights and murders. Another example is animated movie stars with beastlike appearance of main characters such as Shrek and they have fans too.
While, human nature demands beauty formed through breaking into and stitching pieces in postmodern era. Therefore, the criterion ends in non-existed, which are not experienced or seen, and nobody knows about them, something new that is in conflict with all beliefs and cultures. This thought was welcomed and became an aesthetic indicator of post- postmodernity era. It spread out in universities and students, who had worked hard on university courses for a long time, were asked to develop theses on otherness they had not learn about, however; they experienced psychological problems. Otherness influences all living and social aspects.
Non-existence in postmodernism world continues inside families. The cause of disintegration of families and divorces is that human follows something, which does not exist, and they do not know what it is.
Humankind looks for non- existing, a companion in architectural mass. In other words, other than what he has experienced. He wants to change his surrounding, instead of himself. Changing others ends in beauty, the motto by politicians for indolent people, "we change you and society.
During last era, man tried to change himself, which caused beauty, however; in this era he seeks to change others and outside world. This way of thinking resounded in architecture and urbanism. In a city where all buildings demand change and experience, no matter beautiful or not, otherness is pleasing.
Non- Same Seeking for Otherness
\
Unexperienced
Nonexistence (unseen)
X
V
Change (internal)
Confusion (internal)
Fig. 3. Post-postmodern architecture
Table 4. Postmodern same and non- same and post- postmodern beauty
New beauty (post-postmodern)
Postmodern beauty
Non-same (otherness) Lack of beauty Unseen
Ambiguity and lack of comprehensibility
Evident and transparent
Recorded and tested Fixed and unchangeable
Same Beauty Seen
Non- existence, unseen, unexperienced and changing
Modern Aesthetics
Non-same or other than what was and was is thinking in Tehran which is a city with a copied architecture, confused in inexperienced world, not existed neither in the past nor in present architecture, distant from contextualism or being interwoven, resulted in non-same architecture. Constructing western- like buildings which were based on non- same concept, was a disadvantage of non-same thinking. As a symbol of Tehran, Azadi square was a significant urban node with traditional architectural structure. A new view having an underpass, exhibition and spaces defined in urbanism and architecture in terms of transport and human mobility. While directing, the project determines pauses and paths. However, these characteristics are not observed in Milad tower as a symbol of modern thoughts, emphasizing the origin and destination. Based on the hypotheses discussed in this paper, this issue causes individuals to consider destination and ignore the path. The beauty of the path is neglected and passing quickly is considered, in other words; treading whatever on the way to achieve goals. On the other side, La Défense project in Paris focuses on historic dimensions (McMullen et al., 2009) and is a place for social communications and different cultures where non-same post- postmodern architecture formed in all aspects of life, buildings with facades having nothing to do with context, a way of thinking from which this type of projects were yielded.
Conclusions
With a review on traditional architecture and its background and researches on concepts and elements and our precious architecture, an evolved architecture is designed which is rooted in culture and social contexts. Architectures with their way of planning unknown to us should not be used. Changes in pure social thoughts rooted in social beliefs and traditions and avoiding non- same thoughts coming from west had great influence on the architecture and urban structures.
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Citation:
Farshad Mafakher (2018). Post-Postmodern Urban and Architectural on the basics of Jacques Lacan's three orders.
Ukrainian Journal of Ecology, 8(1), 266-272. E^^^^^^MtIiIs work Is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. License
