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By Root 232 0

to bear on it, we could say that this one building belongs to, or produces, a number of architectures. It makes a gesture in more than one cultural context. If we look at it as a work of architecture of the home, then it is a gesture of freedom and emancipation for its inhabitants, in which they can invent their lives, liberated from the conventional constraints of a bourgeois family. If we look at it as an element in the architecture of the city of Utrecht then we can see it as a gesture of attention-seeking, which was welcome here at the edge of town, acting rather like the sort of marker that a city gate-post might once have been. If we look at it as part of the development of modernist architecture, then it is a gesture of great importance, marking one of the crucial moments when the artistry of the building was evident, despite the fact that the form of the building did not derive from earlier buildings, but from more abstract ideas. Which of these is the real meaning? They are all real meanings, and not one of them can be attributed directly to the architect. If we were to want to know about what it meant to him, then we would need to immerse ourselves in the literature of theosophy, and learn about Madame Blavatsky’s descriptions of the spirit world. These days not many of us are inclined to do so, but even if we did retrieve Rietveld’s original understanding of the building, that would not invalidate the other readings, or make them meaningless.

As society becomes more pluralistic and multicultural, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand in advance what a building will mean to the people who will be using it. If an architect and the building’s users are from the same social group, then it is more likely that the gestures will be understood in the way that they were intended. However any public building will be used by people with a multiplicity of different backgrounds, who respond to things in different ways. This is not a problem, so long as the responses fall within a reasonable range, but if for example a modern public official were to erect a house that looked and worked like the Brighton Pavilion, whether the money came from the public purse or whether it was borrowed (as it was when the then Prince of Wales built it) then there would now certainly be a public outcry. It is difficult to know what would be made of the oriental styling in a postcolonial context. It could either be seen as a tribute to an important ethnic minority’s culture, or as nostalgia for lost empire, but either way it would have powerful overtones now that were not present when it was built. Then it had some overtones that would be indefensible now, but they were acceptable to the people who came into contact with the building in its day. If it were built today, then there would be riots and resignations. Queen Victoria hated the building and all it represented to her. This was not principally on account of the style, but on account of the life that the building was designed to make possible – a life of extravagance and debauchery, which stood at odds with the image of the monarchy that she was determined to project. It was under Victoria that the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt, as an image of rectitude and piety, suited to the kind of government she would have hoped to see. When the Lord Chancellor’s suite there was recently refurbished the price seemed to the popular press to be profligate, but if we make adjustments for changes in the value of money, it would have cost no more than it did originally. From the outset the building’s duty was to be magnificent, not cheap. That was what was seen as appropriate to its role.

Now, more than in the past, it is necessary for public buildings to justify themselves to the public at large. We still accept that the meaning and value that is perceived by an educated elite has some value, but as the idea of democracy takes hold ever more firmly, it is seen as necessary for the popular audience to have its say. This was shown with great clarity at the award of the Royal Institute