Good grief; the future is already here and I haven’t continued my blogging about the future. Last time I had asked “What will make our world uplifting and sustaining in 2060?” It’s time to bite the bullet (will bullets exist outside of museums in 2060? I’d bet the mortgage they will), and imagine. Again we’ll need to go back in order to go forward.
I can’t assure myself that I know what “current” buildings will look like in 2060, but I’d wager that most of the buildings that we’ve built in 2010 will still be around. And many of those will be starting to have appeal as “antiques,” considered charming if only for their quaintness and naïveté. They will not be technically up-to-date; but people will try to make do in them since their age adds attraction. Why is that?
Here’s why: The more we learn about the universe, the smaller and more insignificant we seem in comparison. That feeling will only increase in the future, unless society determines, in response to our cosmic marginalization, to pretend anew that we are the center of it all. But if we can’t pretend anymore that it’s all about us, we’ll need to find other ways to center ourselves, and the past helps us do that by locating us in both time and place. We like the past, for the most part, because it makes us feel more secure. Someone, if not us, lived here, and that gives us a sense that there really is a “‘here here.” It is comforting to feel that we are part of an ongoing continuum of life despite our own mortality. We are not drifting in the cosmic sea: where we’ve come from helps to tell us where we are and where we are going.
The past also helps us claim our places. The late architect (and our former partner) Charles Moore once wrote that the essence of building is territorial. We see great struggles over territorial claims worldwide. From the Middle East to urban slums, people harm one another to keep hold of their places. Building in our society, for the most part, is a far gentler way to handle our territorial urges (though I’ve seen some pretty nasty zoning hearings.) In any case, if we need to claim places so urgently, then historical entitlement to them might help us feel at home, even if it isn’t really our own history!
Clapboard Saltbox, c. 1672
So it is likely that in the future, say 2060, the past will reign somewhere for somebody. They will still need to know who they are, where they are, and need to claim their turf. Their past (and roadmap to the future) will include both our past (i.e. clapboard saltbox houses or classical detail), AND our current architecture. People will dote on it and restore it, if it is appealing.
That suggests that we make sure our buildings last, with durable, handsome materials that look better as they age. Let’s make them flexible, to accommodate changing uses without requiring dismantling. Let’s make sure they use minimal energy to make them easier to heat and cool after fossil fuels diminish. And let’s make them appealing with uplifting space and light, a connection to Nature, and endearing symbolism and craft. Our grandchildren deserve that. Hey, you know, we’re making the future and not just the present. We are collaborating with the future.
"Real Modern", Mies' Tugehndat House
Miami Beach, "Moderne" hotels
Now in some cases, the past doesn’t seem so great. After centuries of pogroms and the Holocaust, European Jews did not find the past inspiring; rather, it was threatening – just as it must be for billions of underprivileged or downtrodden people around the globe today. So it is not surprising to find that Jews, not just the well-to-do but the middle class, too, were among the biggest supporters of early modernism. Tel Aviv and Miami Beach were developed in strikingly similar Art Deco/Moderne styles.
The "Mediterranean" Venetian Pool in Coral Gables
A few years earlier, right near Miami Beach, WASP developers from Cleveland had created Coral Gables, Florida, starting with a variety of “tasteful” seed villages that channeled old, picturesque places: provincial France, Spain, Norman England, and Greek villages. The Jews wanted none of it; they’d been run out of all those places. They wanted and needed a future, a new future. This suggests that simply looking back to find a way forward may not suffice.
And of course, buildings are often a product to be sold (developers actually call their new homes “product”). And developers sell “product” by highlighting its latest and greatest elements, whether a new kitchen appliance or clean energy system. Institutions do the same, to sell to their donors. Sellers always want a “WOW” factor (to use their worn term). That too often results only in a different appearance, which will, in turn, look old soon enough. Our market economy loves planned obsolescence. But is that kind of revolution (as in revolving) ultimately uplifting and sustainable? Is novelty any better than sentimentality?
So now we’re back where we started, looking to a new future. But what should it be like? Stay tuned.
