Fact and Function in Architectural Criticism

According to Vitruvius, successful works of architecture are supposed to possess three virtues: durability, convenience, and beauty.1 Of these, one might expect the last, beauty, to be the most difficult to apply and so to be the focus of disputes in architectural criticism. Beauty, after all, is widely believed to be “in the eye of the beholder,” and people frequently insist that whether something is beautiful cannot be settled through empirical study or rational debate. Whether something is durable, in contrast, seems to be clearly a matter of fact, something that can be assessed empirically, for example, by measuring the ability of a structure to withstand stress or exposure to the elements. Convenience—which today we might call “utility”—is more complex, but seems similarly based in fact. For example, to assess the utility of a hospital, we could measure the speed with which personnel and supplies may be moved through it. For these reasons, we might well expect beauty to be the real sticking point of disputes within architectural criticism. However, many interesting cases in contemporary architectural criticism seem not to meet this expectation. Here it is the issue of utility, or functionality, that has emerged as the nub of some important disagreements, though not in quite the way one might expect.2 Consider, as an example, Daniel Libeskind's 2007 extension of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Libeskind's construction, now known (after one of its philanthropic patrons) as the Lee‐Chin Crystal, was a renovation of the entrance to the previously existing museum complex. A dramatic structure composed of sloping walls that meet at sharp angles, the Crystal appears to erupt from the space between the two older and much more architecturally reserved wings of the museum. The original design, which Libeskind famously produced on the back of some napkins after lunch at the ROM restaurant, called for a completely glass exterior, producing a transparent “crystal.”3 Practical considerations, including the severity of the local climate, required abandoning this aspect of the design, and the exterior was covered with aluminum, although long windows overlooking the street remain. Critics of the design complained about a number of its features, including its lack of site specificity and its obvious similarities to some of Libeskind's other commissions, particularly the Denver Art Museum and his well‐known design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. But its lack of functionality was a particular target. ROM staff and patrons complained about the space's unsuitability for exhibitions, citing the absence of vertical walls. The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott declared it a “useless” building, writing that, despite its impressive appearance from the street, once inside, “you need a map to move around its irrational and baffling dead spaces.”4 Another critic described it as “an ill‐conceived funhouse.”5 The Lee‐Chin Crystal may seem to be an odd example for me to choose to illustrate the idea that function is a source of controversy in recent architectural criticism. It might seem that these criticisms of the building's lack of functionality are not controversial at all, but rather beyond dispute: if the curators cannot mount the displays, then the building simply does not work—end of story. Indeed, the controversy over the ROM renovation is sometimes glossed in a way that suggests that its lack of functionality is uncontroversial, and that this point is conceded even by its defenders. According to this view, the building's defenders have a rather nontraditional view of architecture, on which one simply dismisses the importance of functionality, placing the emphasis on beauty instead. This view sees the architect not as someone attempting to fulfill utilitarian needs, but rather as an artist, concerned only with the appearance of the structure that she is creating, or perhaps just with the idea behind the structure, as an end in itself. Thus Mark Kingwell, in a recent discussion of the Crystal, draws an analogy between architects of Libeskind's ilk and certain decadent conceptual artists, both of whom produce work that, in its detachment from reality, is ultimately empty and uninteresting.6 This way of phrasing the debate, however, is not entirely fair. For defenders of what Kingwell calls “idea‐buildings,” such as the Lee‐Chin Crystal, do not concede that these structures are useless. Perhaps the Crystal's most vigorous defender, the Toronto Star's architecture critic Christopher Hume, argues that the Crystal's interior design has brought a much‐needed “sense of urbanity” to the experience of the museum.7 He lauds the Crystal's “Spirit House,” a central open space running from the base to the ceiling of the structure, for providing a welcome space for contemplation and reflection, “a reminder that the new museum is not a glorified daycare center.” He also praises the structure's long windows, which connect the ROM's displays to the streetscape outside, and the expanded sidewalk space created by the Crystal. The latter, he argues, creates an important public space that represents an extension of the museum into its urban environment.8 Hume's praise is clearly not praise of the building as an “end in itself”: rather, it is praise of the building for the things it does. Hume's appraisal is based on a conception of the ROM's function articulated by the museum's director (and the chief proponent of the Libeskind renovation), William Thorsell. In a 2007 speech entitled “The Museum as the New Agora,” Thorsell wrote, In Europe and North America, the museum's functions are expanding from those of collection, research, conservation, exhibition and education to those as instruments of urban renewal and social integration. … Museums are no longer saviours of cities because of their isolation—if that was ever one of their purposes—but because of the engagement of museums with cities—their function as common ground and agents of provocative conversation.9 According to Thorsell, the ROM's primary role is as a “cosmopolitan community center” in which the diverse communities of the city can meet and learn about one another. In light of the ROM's function as Toronto's “new agora,” Thorsell defended the Crystal's structure as exactly appropriate and functional. For instance, commenting on the new street space created by the design, Thorsell said, I see the plaza as a stage set. We've discovered that the Crystal is a very good screen. So, for example, every evening during the Toronto Film Festival, we’ll be projecting a film about Darfur. For Nuit Blanche [an annual Arts festival], at the end of September, we’re bringing in the biggest video DJ from the U.K., who’ll do work across the whole front of the Crystal. I can also see special lighting for special events and days—the equinox, Christmas, New Year's Eve. … We would like to see street performers—jugglers, hypnotists, clowns.10 In short, a sympathetic look at defenses of the Lee‐Chin Crystal serves to demonstrate that the controversy over the building is not a battle between two conceptions of good architecture: one practical and the other artistic. Clearly, the Crystal's defenders do not see it as useless or merely as an “end in itself,” but as performing important social functions. In our example, then, the dispute about functionality is very much alive. The dispute, however, is not primarily over whether the Crystal serves the functions of the traditional museum. Rather, the dispute concerns a more fundamental issue: what is the function of this building in the first place? The critics insist that the ROM's function is to facilitate exhibitions, allow storage of the collection, and so on: its defenders insist that the structure is there to connect the institution to the surrounding cityscape, to provide a much more wide‐ranging experience of community for its patrons. Thus, the dispute boils down to a disagreement over who or what determines the “true” function of a building: is it tradition that lays down the purpose of what we build or is it the vision of its architect and builders? Or, alternatively, is it the needs and wants of those who will use the building who decide what it really is for? This sort of dispute is not novel: similar philosophical debates surrounded some key works of International Modernism in the early twentieth century.11 The fact that these same debates are still being played out, rather inconclusively, in contemporary architecture makes it tempting to conclude that, argue as we will, we will discover here no truth, but only politics. That is, we might conclude that the question as to which function of the ROM is the “real” or “true” one is only a pseudo‐question, there being no fact of the matter one way or the other. On this way of thinking, claims that this or that function of a building is the one are what the called that we use the building to do this or some such ultimately out, it is not because that function was the real function of the it is through or one of the to do things his This though rather could be as an important about architectural criticism. 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