So, i am close to graduating in architecture and urbanism (it is a unified course in Brazil, which is not a bad thing, there is a lot of crossover in urbanism discussions that are really relevant to architecture) and i have been reading lukács take on architecture for a assignment and i am full of thought and i would enjoy if you heard them out or gave me some takes on those thoughts.
Ok, Lukács is a marxist, he was trying to write an unified marxist thesis on art, because Marx and Engels loved to talk about art and stuff in letters, but they never did an organized work on it. he plans to do one volume for each of the arts and i think there are 3 volumes, but the problem is he starts by the first art, architecture, and IT SUCKS, he looks at it and realizes "ARCHITECTURE SUCKS NOW" and that bums him out, because like all the other arts are thriving during his lifetime, but he sees architecture, getting more and more tech, and still stagnate, and he decides to figure out why.
One of his more interesting findings on this is that he notices a unique trait that the other arts don't have, he sees architecture as a binary, of both the material conditions and phisicality of the contruction and the subjective perception and values we attach to it, and architecture can only be art (or good), when the dialetical opposition of these 2 sides are working toward something, he likes churches, and he uses the example of how many old churches used their materiality to create an ambiance, the way the sound or the light is on those spaces to create a space and in a sense a "closeness to the divine", I will not go much futher on the church thing because it get real complicated, it is subjective, he is really close to coming to the "architecture can be read as semiotics" take on this, but like he sees the material part of architecture as both the building, it's and the material conditions of the time, as architecture is about creating space, the type of space created is a consequence of which classes have power, and how this society lives.
There are some implications from this, one of the fun ones is that protest architecture can't exist, it just is not possible, because the building is tied to the society that creates it, and if someone made one, they would be coopted or destroyed, as space is a really tense strugle of political interests. One of the less fun ones is that the reason why architecture sucks is because we suck, as a society, it is not as if we can't make good architecture , it is just that most of the architecture we do fucking sucks, because most of it is done for the market, no consideration of what would be better for the city and instead a consideration of what would be more profitable for the owner, it is a bummer, but it does mean that if we get our shit together maybe our cities won't suck so much
Ok these are my thoughts thanks for anyone who indulges me on my dumb bulshit , love you, you rock
the protest thing is weird, like he is going from an art perspective, so he is seeing protest architecture like there would be protest literature he talks about Dostoiévski in particular irc like he is talking about art that criticizes and lays bare the ruling powers and architecture can't do that, a building can't criticize or refuse whoever uses it, and a building is so tied to the material conditions and the possibilities of it's time that it could not critize it's time, it can't criticize the rulers that allow it to be made, like it is fun to think because even conceptualizing what the fuck a protest architecture would be is so hard kinda argues the point that we haven't seen it yet it is still impossible,
On the less fun one, it is a bit obvious but like HE IS FROM 1885 HUNGARY so like good on him for getting it. he argues it used to be better, like even feudal times, it just wasn't this bad, because architecture wasn't about profit, it was about power, and thus it actually had the social and collective side of it, as much as a feudal lord can be a piece of shit, you can't fully alienate your peasants you need them, he talks about the walls that were done in feudal times, and he talks about how safe people would feel inside, and they were safe because of it, but there weren't raving barbarians every day outside, like most of the times this perception just came from the wall the material object and your perception of the wall protecting you from the world outside, like this is not me saying that all pre modern buildings are good, just that he thinks it was easier for buildings to be good, because they could have a communal and collective value to the place they are, not just in a services they provide sense, like this seems to a modern problem like i don't think the egypticians or the mesoamericans ever had to think about architecture sucking because they got in one (PYRAMID COOL)
Lmao, imagine him seeing the level of stagnation we have today