Forrest on Modernism

As defined by the dictionary, the word modern has a simple and direct definition: “of or relating to modern times.” Taken at face value, this definition is rendered useless in the timeline of history; what was labeled “modern” twenty years ago is not today, making the very use of the word problematic in describing the history of architecture. However, despite its ineptitude, the word modern has come to define a period of architecture, and the foreseeable problems (or, for historians, opportunities) remain with us to this day. Jencks’ recognizes this in his “The Protestant Crusade,” an concedes the most definition: “modern architecture is the overpowering faith in industrial progressivism and its translation into the pure, white International Style (or at least the Machine Aesthetic) with the goal of transforming society both in its sensibility and social make-up.” What was once just a word that described temporal innovation suddenly assumes intense political and social implications. Jencks recognizes that the word “modern” to many architects represented transformation and upheaval locked in architectural form. They fixed the mutable word to define an abstract aesthetic that was meant to reflect a social transition where patronage of the arts and architecture had shifted from the church to an enlightened bourgeoisie—so much so that it absorbed social values.

The paradigmatic architects of this period relished in this language. Le Corbusier, in his Athens Charter, spoke of the spatial manifestations of social power, as “suburban townships…take on an unexpected and unforeseeable importance, either positive or negative, by becoming the seat of luxury residences.” Luxury was generally associated with corruption, and therefore the solution, by Le Corbusier’s argument, could be defined spatially. In other words, if the factors (or systems) that underlie the formation of elitism could be understood, they could be prevented spatially by inserting the egalitarian, “modern” architecture in its path. Thus, architecture and design could replace religion in influencing morality under the fixed definition of “modern.” A generation later, the meaning of “modern” as applied to architecture remained constant precisely because of the understood meaning and power the word had assumed. Louis Kahn’s talks on architecture were replete in religious rhetoric long before Jencks wrote “The Protestant Crusade,” stating “art is form-making life in order – psychic order is intangible…from order [the architect] will derive creative force and power of self-criticism to give form to the unfamiliar.” The notion of “modern” is almost god-like, with design being a “creative force” that can reveal mystical and intangible human emotions. Again, modernism came to mean a power social, cultural and even religious force that has a powerful role in shaping society.

Inevitably, time ushered in new ideas of architecture as it relates to society, replacing the productive idea of modernism with an architecture for a society that had shifted to consumerism. Constant consumption demands perpetual innovation, translating to new images and meanings in architecture (perhaps making it more modern than modernism, in the truest sense of the definition). However, the word “modern” was so fixed by previous generations’ usage that it was further fixed by labeling everything thereafter as “postmodern.” Not only did this cleverly recognize the fixed meaning of modernism, but it also allowed a broad and possibly ever-changing definition thereafter. In this way, PoMo has no fixed doctrine because one is not needed; where moderism (according to Jencks) replaced religion, consumerism replaced modernism.