By Polina Kulikova
“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.” — Leo Tolstoy
On day one of first year architecture studio I was tasked with defining ‘architecture’ in my own terms. So that after five years of school I could compare my feeble little eighteen year old mind’s definition to the one made by my then weathered and emotionally scarred graduating brain. I aged a decade, nearly cut off a finger, and learned that I learned nothing.
It is obvious that a singular definition for architecture doesnt exist. After the five years, we had to graduate with our self fabricated meanings for a simple word. And if your definitions didnt use big big scary scary words, your project most definitely wasnt interesting enough. I believe this is right around where academia lost Howard Roark. To comply and appease I learned to stuff my breifs full of fraudulently impressive and foreign linguistic attempts I barely knew the meaning of in order to sound like my definition of architecture was unique. In reality, I didnt know what it meant to me until my last year. I didnt allow myself the chance to explore those thoughts since I was busy studying wall assemblies and reading about ducks and sheds. While we had our dose of theory, certain concepts weren’t discussed. The magic of the technical architect with clean geometry and ingenious circulation appeared to have always trumped the blatant conceptualist. Professors made sure we knew that nothing we designed would ever get built. Talk about a pep talk. Where is my participation trophy?
But as life after architecture school goes on you realize that besides your varied collection of random technical skills involving an xacto knife and masterful ability to nap on a desk, you realize you leave with more questions then when you started. [Insert execerbating opinion here]. I caught on that I know nothing but can certainly ponder. In certain instances, I noticed that after all the complex technicalities of building a building are complete, some of the rebar skeletons somehow gain a soul? Some ooze purpose, some stay bland. Some hold a power within them – a quiet anthem to their gruesome existance.
I became aware of my heightened interest in the feeling, the meaning, the purpose and the legacy. I wanted to feel something!!! Prod me in the ribs with a piece of stucco would you? I searched for the unexpected effect of the cause, not the expected result of the purpose. I noticed how little I cared for the typically “good architecture”. The stuff that makes the most sense, while successful in accommodating the user, often becomes incapable of taking on other meanings. The green giants of Singapore – while zero net energy and the prime example of how archtitecture can save the world – bore me (not argueing green architecture is not important, I am just bored). These beasts just havent soaked up enough humanity yet for us to feel something profound.
All I knew was that I carried a certain affinity for the rough around the edges, concrete monsters that everyone else hated. I noticed the brutalist liviathans of Londons waterfront held a power of deterring tourists while telling sweet stories of war and peace to those that truly noticed them. Somehow, the crumbling soviet housing blocks in my Russian hometown held invisible power to move me to tears. I am convinced that the Barbican has a soul while it may appear to most as a mossy, sad and barren residence. The Keeling house doesnt hide that is has seen a lot, maybe too much – to some it was shelter, to some it was home – the fragile dichotomy upheld by warm fleeting interactions designed to happen between neighbours. These monuments to life dont even know they are monuments, commemorating countless moments of heartful refuge.
[Before the fellowship commenced]
I wanted to find these quiet heroes. The metamorphosis from architecture to monument. This specific word matters. Architecture is no longer a term good enough to be associated with the legacy held by my quiet heroes.
- They are revolutionary and paradigmatic of the turbulent changing human experience. They are understood with variable stipulations simultaneously.
- They are rebellious, public, and emotional rather than existing within a grey area somewhere between disruption and compliance.
- They are Monuments.
Then I found the work of the Russian constructvists. Their work: abstract, austere and full of social purpose, the ornamental fluff was torn away and radical monuments to the desired freedom epoch rose up. By this point in my thesis I learned that true monument couldnt be planned, it could only become. The creator doesnt have a to be radical but they have to be at a least a little bit crazy to relinquish control of what their creation might turn into. Tatlin’s tower wouldve risen like a delicate beast against the fiery backdrop of the revolution. Monuments as such appear to have a heart and if [buildings] are making you cry, you start to pay attention.
To find more of such specimen I had to wander into places that have felt agitation and loss. Monuments tend to be architectures of privation. Or at the least the best ones are. Plants grow firmer in the wind. People grow stronger in turbulent times. War breeds pain but also breeds tremendous shifts in social culture. The monuments and architectures that came out of the post war period are some of the most important objects we as humans have to show for ourselves.
What followed became my own little experiment. I took myself on an adventure of sorts. My intention when I embarked on this fellowship was to understand the effects of Soviet Era architecture and monuments in several Eastern Bloc countries (ugh, sometimes I bore even myself). But what I left with was an uneasy feeling of discontent towards all those who call the ornamented monsters lining european boulevards “architecture”. All while the weathered concrete giants of the post war period sleep gracefully unbothered in their dusty neighbourhoods of leaking car oil and rambling overground trains. Good, leave them be. They are like wise centurion grandfathers, silent until asked, and once asked will tell you stories they hear inside their walls. Stories of human life, serious, trembling and too real, too ugly to fit within the confines of reconstructed polished palaces of the 1st arrondissement. But only if you spend time with them will you start to take note of their mossy overgrowths, damp enfilades and just then you might get comfortable with the barren truth and secrets of human perseverance that built them. These are the real monuments to war. Not the statues and busts and ornate inscriptions, but the brutalist behemoths, immortalizing the aftermath of human contempt for fellow man through reinforced steel and crumbling stucco facades. Love them and they will show you love.
