Architecture - Andrew Ballantyne [55]
Westminster, then I might find that I was treating national monuments such as the Palace of Westminster in just this way, as local landmarks. Our reactions to the buildings depend as much on our ways of thinking about them as they do on the buildings themselves, providing that the buildings remain reliably in place. But this way of thinking about buildings has only local significance, and would not prompt anyone to make a journey to see the buildings in question. For that we need to be convinced that the building in question is very special indeed for one reason or another. In some cases the building might be extravagantly eyecatching and unlike anything else that we have seen, or – as is the case with the Seagram Building and the Parthenon – be the highly accomplished ‘original’ example of a widely used building type, which makes it in some way authoritative. They have significance not only because they are fine buildings, but also because they are part of a story that is told about the development of architecture through the ages. The key buildings in that story form a ‘canon’ – a set of buildings that everyone with a certain level of polite culture might be expected to know. The German word for this level of culture is Bildung, for which there is no precise English equivalent, but there is nevertheless still a feeling that one ought to know about certain buildings. If I realized in the course of conversation that an architectural historian of towering reputation had not heard of the Parthenon, then I for one would feel inclined to think that there was something fraudulent about the reputation. Some buildings are so regularly used as reference points in our culture that not to know them is to show that one does not participate in the culture. And the culture in question here is not local but international – which is not to say that it is uniform everywhere. If I look back at the list of illustrations selected for this book, it is plain enough that I am writing from within a Western tradition. The cottage that is shown in Figure 2 was chosen as a fairly typical example of a low status traditional building, and no one would expect an architectural historian to recognize it with any precision. It is not famous. All the rest of the buildings are well known, with the exception of the Etruscan temple, which is more specialized but necessary for the story that I was trying to tell at that point. Most of the buildings have stood the test of time and have already shown themselves to be useful reference points in the discussion and analysis of architecture. Some personal favourites such as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Kimbell Museum by Louis Kahn have not found their way into the discussion, which surprises me. Had I been from a different part of the world, then my attempt to give an impression of architecture would have included some different examples. I would have had fewer buildings from Western Europe, and my sense of what is central and what peripheral would certainly be different if I were rooted in a different tradition. However, many of the same buildings would certainly have been included in other people’s selections: the idea is to give an introduction to a range of buildings with wide significance, and most of them will be familiar to anyone who has taken an interest in the subject. It is possible to imagine alternative canons, based around the telling of different stories about architecture, that would generate a different choice of buildings. That would amount to a radical departure, whereas the aim of this book is to introduce a selection of buildings of acknowledged merit. Once a building has an established place in the canon then it does one no good as a novice to challenge its place there. There is no doubting the merit of the Parthenon or Bourges Cathedral, and if we go round telling people that we’re not impressed with them then that stands as a judgement on our understanding, which can be discounted, not on the buildings, which continue to be seen as outstandingly good. This is the means by which fine buildings