What’s wrong with living in huts?

Often times we hear that everything that could be done has already been done and everything that could be conjectured has already been posited. I thought of the debate on functionalism that came with the post-modern movement and how I initially thought this was a never-before-seen discourse on architecture. Reading Piranesi’s essay showed me that these arguments have been going on for at least two centuries. In the essay, Piranesi is responding to criticism of his work, which celebrates the ”excessive” ornamentation and articulation that came with the roman vocabulary of classical architecture, through a structured dialogue between two characters. What Piranesi essentially does is to debunk the idea that Greek architecture, which was viewed by his critic as essentially pure, developed wholly as a response to the function of its elements. He goes on further to assert that if we were to go down this rabbit hole of functionalism we would essentially be living in huts. Now, what I think is wrong about his idea is that he seemed to be making some sort of connection between the complex and super-adorned architecture and the condition of the society that creates this architecture. Now, I find his whole denigration of simplistic architectural forms such as mud huts troubling firstly because, well, because much of West African architecture has to do with mud construction (and some of my relatives do live in huts, if we start connecting societal sophistication to architectural complexity we can see where the problems arise), and secondly because even though he is citing what the supposedly elevated stature of the classical vocabulary says about the society he is at the same time ignoring the context that the vocabulary sprung from.

A good example is when he cites Bernini as one of the greatest architects (and by extension celebrating the Baroque movement). Its always tricky dealing with beautiful things that do not arise from beautiful means. The baroque aesthetic is indeed evocative, but it has its roots in the corrupt politics of the catholic church– a church which responded to growing disillusionment and protests to unreasonable taxes by spending more money and resources in making the everyday man feel even more insignificant in the presence of God (the church).

I think the thing that makes people critical with architectural languages such as Piranesi’s is that it often hints at the arrival of society at a point of self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is not necessarily bad. Often, it speaks to prosperity and, sadly, sometimes it speaks to the beginning of decline (Hellenistic Greece, roman empire etc). Therefore ornament, just as functionalism, can be viewed as a rabbit hole.

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Thoughts on Architecture, 1765.