The economic crisis has put paid to the trophy building projects of the last 20 years, but architects need not despair – the wheel will turn.
The mantra of zealous modern architects in Britain, Europe and the United States during the great depression of the 1930s was "form follows function". They bided their time, nurtured their ideals and came to prominence in the decades following the second world war. Since then, modern architecture has passed up, down and through many aesthetic – "form follows fashion" – and economic hoops.
Today, as architects of the global stature of Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers lay off staff – half of them, in Gehry's case – the mantra ringing through their minds is very probably "form follows finance". Just look at the extraordinary worldwide construction boom of the past decade. Entire cities – London, Leeds, downtown Los Angeles, Berlin, Beijing and Shanghai – have grown, changed shape and shot up into the sky in a gung-ho manner that makes some of them almost unrecognisable from the way they were such a short while ago.
As the good times rolled with the madcap antics of international banking and promiscuous credit, the very shape of so much architecture and so many buildings began to change. Out went austere or ascetic minimalism, and in came a kaledeiscopic, cinematic new architecture featuring the fecund talents of the likes of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Rem Koolhaas, together with a host of younger architects for whom form appeared to follow fancy – although, in reality, it was following in the wake of a colossal economic boom.
Alongside this urgent flowering of sensational new design, came wave after wave of new skyscrapers. Bigger. Faster. Stronger. Shinier. By the time recession hit home late last year, there were plans afoot to hide what remained of the old City of London in a forest of new office towers, supported by both the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and by his successor, Boris Johnson. There were plans to do much the same in Paris, with President Sarkozy actively promoting a new generation of towers for which the word "bling" would be too be too posh by half. Chicago was to have been dominated by a spiral skyscraper designed by the master of urban bling, Santiago Calatrava. And, so it went on.
And, now? A break in construction, certainly, but after the deluge? What then? Of course, it's difficult to be sure of future developments in architecture, and yet there is a tendency for architectural action to be followed by reaction, and reaction by further reaction. The collapse of the British economy at the time of the oil crisis and three-day week of 1973-4, for example, spelled the end of straight-up-and-down modernist design, of public-sector architecture, concrete high-rise estates, concrete low-rise estates and Brutalism. A world that had been led by the heroes of post-war British modernists, among then Erno Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun, seemed to have come to a sudden stop.
When the going got good again, postmodern design, all bright colours, visual jokes, architectural puns, allusions, elisions, illusions swept into view. Architects such as Terry Farrell popped up with comic relief in the form of his TV-am studios in Camden Town, or architecture in the guise of a knowing street urchin. Piers Gough and his team at CZWG let rip with zany apartment blocks in London's up-and-coming Docklands. Even the man who more or less invented architectural postmodernism, Robert "less is a bore" Venturi, was shipped in from the States, with his wife Denise Scott-Browne, to design the controversial new Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
But, when the economy dipped again at the end of the 1980s, po-mo was out, and a new wave of expressive modernism, the "iconic" architecture, effectively took its place. So what now? Recessions are a time for architects to rethink their game. They need not despair, but, rather, regroup for the next boom. For a while, I think there may well be a reaction to the fireworks of the past decade. Architects such as the Tokyo practices of Toyo Ito and Sanaa (currently at work on the design of this summer's Serpentine Gallery pavilion in Kensington Gardens) point to one highly inventive, yet gentle future.
Equally, there may well be a return– up to a point – in public architecture and design. Indeed, government investment in building might even be necessary to help kick-start the UK economy in the months ahead. Schools. Hospitals. Colleges. Training centres. All of these would require architects to think out of the "iconic" box. Commercial skyscrapers and big-name museums and galleries have been flashy in recent years to draw maximum attention to themselves and to their promoters. This wouldn't be necessary, or even desirable, in the case of clinics and schools.
A new modesty, then? Yes, for a while. But, when the wheel of fortune turns up again, expect a reaction to the New Modesty. Expect, at the very least, a Modesty Blaze, and then new forms of architecture that those being made redundant from their jobs, and those about to leave architecture school, are only beginning to formulate. And, by the way, applications to British architecture schools have never been higher. Architecture, more than most arts, requires, and even demands, optimism even in the face of the most severe economic downturns. The Empire State Building began to rise the very moment Wall Street crashed. Depression has not, after a shaky financial start, hindered its rise into the firmament of all-time architectural wonders.
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