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By Root 210 0

is problematic to expose steel columns in a tall building, because the structure needs to withstand fire better than steel does by itself. Therefore the steel columns in Mies’s buildings sometimes had to be cased in protective material, like concrete. In order to express the structure, he then cased the column in steel, making it look as if the building were held up by larger steel columns. The point to be made here is this: even when an architect decides that a building will express its own construction that does not mean that the process of design takes care of itself. There are many decisions to be made, which are often matters of judgement that could change the building’s appearance. Why, for example, does one express the fact that the structure needed to resist gravity, but not that it needed to resist wind? Why not express the fact that columns are protected to make the building safe in case of fire? The occupants of the building might find that very reassuring. The answer surely is deeply traditional. The Western tradition has for over two and a half thousand years found particular value in buildings with columns, and they have been seen as the basis of a building’s aesthetic effects. Monumental buildings had large columns. High-status buildings had finely wrought columns, made of good materials. The Greek word for column is stylos, which is the root of the English word ‘style’. The row of columns around a Greek temple is called the peristyle. A building without columns is called ‘astylar’, without style.

Tradition and novelty

This tradition has been challenged as attempts have been made to express other important aspects of the building, such as the heating and ventilating equipment, which can amount to a large part of the cost, and be difficult to hide away. At the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, for example, the various service ducts and circulation systems – stairways, escalators, and lifts – are made highly visible, threading their way through the structure of the building to give it its particular character (Figure 25). The structure here is handled ingeniously, so that the large columns are mostly hidden within the building, and the structure that is visible in the main façade is hardly more than a network of fine steel, which has the appearance of scaffolding. The building, when it is swarming with people, seems to be little more than a support for the activities in and around it, which is its point. This is architecture conceived as a ‘facility’ rather than a monument. It is a place where events are made to happen, rather than a determinedly beautiful self-sufficient form. People who look at it in photographs see it as an assembly of girders, reminiscent of an oil refinery, but people who have visited it remember more clearly the journey up the escalator, the views from the top, which are extensive, and the rooftop café, the exhibitions, or the street performers. For such a large and colourful building, it is surprisingly reticent, but it works by such different means than does, say, the Parthenon, that we might wonder whether the same category, ‘architecture’, can be the right category for both of them.

In fact, though, both buildings belong to the same tradition and have some points in common. Of course there are differences, of attitude and atmosphere, which are so obvious that they hardly need to be pointed out. However each building is an artistic showpiece, that houses art treasures. In the case of the Parthenon, the much-admired statue of Athena dominated the interior space, but the holier relics were housed a short distance away in the Erechtheion. The Centre Pompidou exhibits major art works in changing exhibitions, but the art works to which the most serious reverence is due are housed a short distance away at the Louvre. Each building presides over an external space, which in the case of the Parthenon was more formally designated a sanctuary, but which in the case of the Centre Pompidou is a well-defined public square. The innermost part of each building is restricted and reserved